Father Bergoglio Urged Them To Leave The Jesuit Order

Fr. Orlando Yorio, S.J.

Father Franz Jalics and Father Orlando Yorio were living among the poor in a Buenos Aires slum, an activity the dictatorship viewed as suspicious. They were kidnapped and held in a secret prison, blindfolded, and shackled hand and foot, for five months, before they were let go. 

Father Yorio in 1977 wrote a detailed account of the kidnapping, in which he questioned Father Bergoglio’s actions. He wrote that Father Bergoglio made negative reports about their activities to local bishops and claimed they were in the slums without his permission. He said Father Bergoglio urged them to leave the Jesuit order and then had them expelled from the order just days before the kidnapping. It was not possible to verify Father Yorio’s account, and experts in church procedures questioned whether the order’s rules would have allowed Father Bergoglio to expel a priest. Father Yorio’s sister, Graciela Yorio, said in an interview last week that Father Bergoglio had left the two priests “totally unprotected,” which she said made them an easier target for the military.

In his statement, Father Jalics said that false information had circulated in the church accusing the two priests of belonging to a guerrilla group fighting the government, but he did not link Father Bergoglio to that rumor campaign. “Before, I too tended to believe that we were the victims of having been reported,” Father Jalics said in the statement. “By the late ’90s, however, it became clear to me after many conversations that this assumption was unfounded.” 
Link (here) to the New York Times