- Juan Carlos Aramburu
infobox cardinalstyles
cardinal name=Juan Carlos Aramburu
dipstyle=His Eminence
offstyle=Your Eminence
See=Buenos Aires|Juan Carlos Aramburu (
11 February 1912 -18 November 2004 ) was theRoman Catholic Archbishop of Buenos Aires,Argentina , from 1975 to 1990, and was named to theCollege of Cardinals byPope Paul VI in theconsistory of 1976.Aramburu was born in
Reducción in the Province of Río Negro inArgentina . He was Ordained apriest in 1934, he became abishop in 1946, serving successively as auxiliary bishop, diocesan bishop (from 1953), and first archbishop (from 1957) of Tucumán. He created ten new parishes and built chapels in this diocese, as well as a House of Spiritual Exercises. His intense pastoral work included giving the Confirmation to more than 1,000 people in one day.In 1967 he was named coadjutor archbishop of Buenos Aires, and on
22 April 1975 he was installed as archbishop, succeedingAntonio Caggiano . He was elevated to Cardinal one year later, on24 May 1976 .Aramburu was the second youngest bishop in the history of the Argentine Church, and served 70 years of priesthood, during which he ordained ten bishops. At his death, he was the senior bishop by date of consecration in the entire Catholic Church. Active in retirement, he suffered a fatal cardiac failure as he prepared to go hear confessions at the Shrine of San Cayetano.
Links with the dictatorship
The year of Aramburu's elevation to Cardinal coincided with the beginning of the dictatorship of the
National Reorganization Process . TheMothers of the May Square , a group looking for information on their "disappeared" children, wrote to top members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy for help, including Aramburu, but did not get any response. Neither did Aramburu denounce the murder of bishopEnrique Angelelli , conducted by a military task force and disguised as a road accident; instead he claimed that there was no evidence of it being a crime.In 1982, during a trip to Italy, Aramburu was interviewed by the Roman newspaper "
Il Messaggero ", and replied to a question about dissidents being "disappeared" saying: "I don't understand how this question of guerrillas and terrorism has come up again; it's been over for a long time." On the issue of common graves with unindentified bodies being discovered, he claimed: "In Argentina there are no common graves... Everything was recorded in the regular fashion in the books. The common graves belong to people who died without the authorities being able to identify them. Disappeared? Let's not confuse things. You know that there are 'disappeared people' who live quietly in Europe."In 2002, an organization composed of children of disappeared people organized a protest to accuse Aramburu of
collaborationism with the dictatorship. TheArgentine Episcopal Conference released a document in defense of Aramburu. Rubén Capitanio, a priest, sent a critical letter to the Conference where he mentioned, among other things, that Aramburu had given the Communion to people "that [he] knew were responsible of horrible public crimes", and that he had overlooked the human rights abuses at the Navy Mechanics School, within his jurisdiction.References
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* [http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=9950410 Juan Carlos Aramburu] at Find-A-Grave.
* [http://www.cardinalrating.com/cardinal_134.htm Juan Carlos Aramburu] at Cardinal Rating.
* [http://www.usfca.edu/fac_staff/webberm/plaza.htm Searching for life: The Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo and the Disappeared Children of Argentina] .
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