Bishop calls Laghi charges 'nonsensical' former nuncio aided his activist brother - charges that Cardinal Pio Laghi colluded with Argentina's military dictators disbelieved by San Antonio, TX Bishop Michael Pfeifer

National Catholic Reporter, August 29, 1997 by Ann Rogers-Melnick

Bishop Michael Pfeifer of San Angelo, Texas, could not believe it when he heard that Cardinal Pio Laghi was accused of colluding with the military dictators during Argentina's "dirty war" of the 1970s and 1980s.

Pfeifer remembered how Laghi, while serving as apostolic pro-nuncio to the United States ten years ago, came to the aid of his brother, Fr. Ted Pfeifer, an activist and missionary priest in Mexico, after the priest had survived an assassination attempt.

The notion that Laghi had approved the actions of a brutal regime a decade earlier, including the persecution of liberal priests, would be totally contrary to the action that he took in my brother's situation. I think he is a great church leader, very concerned about the church and the poor. It was a real slap in the face to imply that he would be involved in any way in such a diabolical situation of killing. It was nonsensical," Bishop Pfeifer said.

He was reacting to charges made in May by leaders of Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, named for the square where they protested the disappearance of their children during the period of political persecution known as Argentina's "dirty war," from.1976 to 1983. Laghi, 75, was nuncio to Argentina from 1974 to 1980

The group holds Laghi, now prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for Education, responsible for participating in the torture, murder and kidnapping of thousands of dissidents, including the executions of liberal priests. (See NCR, May 30 and June 20.)

Laghi's accusers are asking Pope John Paul II to remove the cardinal's diplomatic immunity so he can be tried.

The Mothers accused Laghi of complicity in a crusade against communism that led to the kidnapping, torture and death of thousands of Argentineans. They cite as witnesses a bishop, several priests, a mother superior and two people who claim to have seen Laghi at secret government torture centers. They also claim that Laghi advised military leaders on the most Christian and and compassionate" way to kill dissidents and personally approved the execution or deportation of liberal priests.

It is well known that, during the military regime, Laghi played tennis with Admiral Emilio Massera, one of three members of the junta. In 1995, Fr. Federico Richards, who edits a Catholic newspaper in Argentina, reported that in 1978, when he sought Laghi's aid to rescue a niece who had "disappeared," Laghi consulted a list he kept bearing the names of thousands of dead and missing Argentineans. After that report Laghi, who earlier had claimed ignorance of the government's crimes, admitted that he had obtained the names of about 6,000 victims. Remaining silent about his knowledge enabled him to help some of them, he said.

Laghi and the Vatican newspaper vigorously denied the latest accusations see NCR, Aug. 1), as did the Conference of Argentinean Bishops and his former tennis partner, Massera. Perhaps Laghi's most distinguished defender was journalist and human rights activist Jacobo Timerman, who was himself imprisoned by the regime. "The history of those terrible years has a bright page reserved for him," Timerman said of Laghi, according to a Reuter story in March.

Other Argentinean human rights activists have described Laghi's chief accuser, Hebe de Bonafini, the founder and leader of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, as a loose cannon. In 1986 the majority of the Mothers left her group and founded another, saying Bonafini was authoritarian, abrasive and irresponsible.

Bishop Pfeifer, now 60, had followed his brother Ted, 65, into the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. For 10 years he worked with his brother in deep southern Mexico before spending six years as the Oblate superior in Mexico City. In 1981, he returned to Texas to head the Oblates' Southern Province, which includes Mexico.

He was intimately familiar with the danger his brother faced in a desperately poor mountain region that had become a haven for drug lords. For 32 years, Ted Pfeifer traveled among Indian villages in Oaxaca State, often on horseback. He had medical training and delivered hundreds of babies. He built a clinic and helped the people obtain their first roads, electricity and clean water.

But he watched as drug lords tore apart the communities where he had worked so hard to give people a sense of dignity and power. Gangsters put the Indians to work growing marijuana and poppies for heroin. They built landing strips for cocaine traffickers, then warehoused tons of the drug in the mountains.

Once an Indian went to work for a drug lord, the only way out was death, Bishop Pfeifer said. Small-scale warfare erupted between rival gangs. The drug lords had more powerful weapons than the Mexican military.

"My brother, who had worked there for about 20 years, saw what was happening. He and the other Oblate missionaries took a stand against it. They were going up against a huge force. People were being killed and mistreated and taken advantage of by the drug lords. My brother and some other priests received threats on their lives," Bishop Pfeifer said.