Drug Cache Found in Cardinal's Car

Argentine Cardinals Jorge Maria Mejia and Jorge
Mario Bergolio

by Andreas Becker

(Buenos Aires) At a French customs checkpoint at Chambery in Savoy just at the Italian border, drugs were seized in the car of the Argentine Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia. The 92-year-old cardinal was not in the car. The car was traveling from Spain to Italy and transported four kilograms of cocaine and 200 grams of cannabis.

Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi confirmed the seizure of the vehicle, but could not provide information on how many and which people were present during the inspection on board the cars. "But I can say that it did not involve persons of the Holy See or  the old and sick cardinal. The police will continue their investigation. "

Vehicle for Transporting Drugs abused?

RTL radio reported, citing the private secretary to the Cardinal, that the car had been dropped off at a workshop a few days earlier. According to unofficial sources, police said two Italians, a 30-year and a 41-year  old had been arrested. The two men appear to have summarily abused the vehicle of the Cardinal to transport  drugs  from Spain. It was not clear at first whether the car was registered as a diplomatic vehicle.

The details are as yet   unclear as to whether the ailing Cardinal is the victim of random perpetrators or of bad employees. His private secretary, Luis Duacastella, for friends he is "Padre Lucho",  is apparently known in Rome for his relationships with young men,   "those with the taxi", so says Catolico Panorama Internacional .

Cardinal Jorge Maria Mejia

Today Jorge Maria Cardinal Mejia is advanced in years and barely known. But what was he like before?

As the still quite well-known in Argentina, anti-liberal-minded, Jesuit, Leonardo Castellani (1899-1981) wrote in his book "16 Lecciones sobre el Verbo Encarnado" (16 Lessons on the Word Made Flesh), his former student Mejia had been adorned with a doctorate, he had not. Castellani blames Mejia  that he was dismissed  from the Jesuit Order in 1949 because of a "heresy-denunciation". The subject matter dealt with the millenarianism-theses of the Jesuits. It was a censorship that was traumatic for Castellani.

Some years later,  Mejia discovered 40 "errors" in his commossion as an episcopal censor of  Castellani's book,  "The Gospel",  as Castellani  was seeking an imprimatur. The competent bishop threatened the ex-Jesuit with  excommunication. With third party verification, it was found that the 38 "errors" of Mejia were attributable to the fact that he had never mastered "either Latin or Greek" and had simply misread the passages. "The two remaining errors were because I had written Sinedrio instead of Sanhedrin and had given the height of a mountain at 2000 meters instead of 1970 meters," said Castellani.

Only in 1966 could Castellani again exercise his priesthood. In 1971 he was offered restoration by the Jesuit order, but he refused. During the military dictatorship, he intervened in vain for writer friends.

Council-Peritus and the "Right Circles"

Despite lack of language skills, Mejia was sent as a Peritus to the Second Vatican Council. For his other ecclesiastical career had, so the Argentine website Pagina Catolica says, developed because of his "open positions" and the editorial that appeared in the Left, national, Antonio Gramsci promoting, Catholic magazine Criterio for a "universal religion of all people".  Mejia corresponded then to the climate and attracted the notice of  influential people. Mejia thus became a key figure in the Latin American ecumenical movement thanks to the knot of  Council contacts.

In other Church representatives,  so says  Pagina Catolica, Mejia fell in with  the San Isidro (diocese) Circle because he was known for  his sympathy for homosexuality.  Mejia, and Bishop Justo Oscar Laguna (1929-2011) Bishop Emilio Bianchi di Carcano, they also belonged to this circle, and next to Archbishop Bergoglio, played an important role in inter-religious dialogue with Judaism, which reached particular intensity in Argentina.

Subsequently, Mejia  became secretary of the ecumenical office of the Latin American Episcopal Conference (CELAM)1967-1977, where he was called to Rome by Pope Paul VI. as secretary of the Commission for Relations between the Holy See and the Jews.  In 1986  John Paul II. made him Deputy Chairman of the Pontifical Commission for Justice and Peace and Titular Archbishop. In 1994 he was appointed Secretary of the Congregation for Bishops . In 1998 he was Archivist and Librarian of the Catholic Church. In 2001 he was raised to the rank of cardinal. Since he was born in the year 1923,  he was not eligible to participate in the conclave of 2005 due to age nor that of 2013. The Cardinal lives in Rome and is in a very troubled state of health following a heart attack last year.

Text: Andreas Becker
image: Blog Francisco de la Cigoña

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