President
Javier Milei
predicted this Saturday that he will have a "very fruitful dialogue" with
Pope Francis
, whom he will greet on Sunday in the Vatican at the canonization ceremony of the first Argentine saint, Mama Antula, and with whom he will hold an audience on Monday. private, and said that Jorge Bergoglio is "
the most important Argentine in history
" and left behind the history of grievances against his Holiness.
"We are going to have a very fruitful dialogue, just like when we spoke on the phone I just assumed. And I hope that we have the possibility that the Pope's health is in conditions for him to come visit the Argentines," Milei said from Rome in statements which he performed on the program "Sábado tempranísimo" on radio
Miter
.
The president stressed that the Pope "is the most important Argentine in history. He is a Pope, we cannot lose that perspective and he cannot be trapped in ideological disputes, especially being a spiritual leader."
"He is a very important figure, the moral supporter especially in a country with so much roots in Catholicism, he is the spiritual leader of Catholics and it is not a minor issue," he concluded.
Milei arrived in the capital of Italy on Friday to participate in the canonization of what will be the first Argentine saint, Mama Antula, and to meet on Monday with Francis as well as with his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella and with the prime minister of the European country, Giorgia Meloni.
The President will participate on Sunday from 9:30 in Rome (5:30 in Argentina) in the canonization of the consecrated laywoman María Antonia de San José Paz y Figueroa, known as Mama Antula, who will become the country's first saint in a ceremony that will be presided over by Francis in St. Peter's Basilica.
Javier Milei, on his visit to Israel.
Photo: Reuters/Amir Cohen
Before the ceremony that will last about two hours, Milei and the delegation will greet the Pope in the sacristy, Vatican sources informed
Télam
.
Meanwhile, on Monday, at 9 a.m. in Rome (5 a.m. in Argentina), the pontiff will receive Milei for a private audience after which he will also greet the delegation that also includes the Secretary General of the Presidency, Karina Milei. , and Foreign Minister Diana Mondino, who were in Israel, the first destination of the presidential tour.
For the agenda in Rome, the ministers Guillermo Francos (Interior) and Sandra Pettovello (Human Capital), and the announced Secretary of Worship, Francisco Sánchez, joined the official delegation.
The meeting will be in the private library on the second floor of the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican and, after seeing Francis, Milei will hold a meeting with the Secretary of State of the Holy See, the Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin.
Javier Milei and his sister Karina at the Colosseum in Rome.
According to presidential spokesperson Manuel Adorni yesterday, the private audience between Milei and the Pope will last 15 minutes.
After the stage in the Vatican, the President will visit his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella and then meet with Premier Meloni, before returning to Buenos Aires on a scheduled flight on Monday night.
The history of tensions between Milei and Pope Francis
Javier Milei had been very hard on Francis in 2020. The president, who at that time identified as Catholic (he is now converting to Judaism), called Pope Francis an "imbecile" and said that
"he is the representative of evil on Earth." ".
He had also questioned the Pope for supporting the payment of taxes and stating that it was important for "a just society."
A year ago, Pope Francis received 300 Argentine pilgrims to attend the Mama Antula canonization ceremony. Photo: Vatican Media
Milei said that Francisco "
always stands on the side of evil.
If someone has an attack of charity, he goes out with a gun to steal to finance it. Do you bless him? Surely something is lost in the middle and others would like a recipient different... Your model is poverty. Stealing is wrong," he wrote on social networks.
The last grievance was in the middle of the electoral campaign after the PASO and before the general elections in an interview he gave to Tucker Carlson, the journalist and former
Fox News
presenter .
There he maintained that Francis
"has an affinity for murderous communists"
and violates the Ten Commandments by defending "social justice."
Francisco never answered Milei.
But in one of the interviews he gave in March to the Argentine media on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of his pontificate, he made a very severe implicit allusion to the libertarian.
Video
He referred to the President's campaign and questioned his trip to Argentina for 2024.
When warning about the risk of getting carried away by anger with politicians, he cited the book “1933 Syndrome” by Seigmund Ginzberg, which describes the context in which Nazism emerged in Germany and the rise of “a politician who spoke nicely and seduced people;
"So they voted for Adolfito and that's how we ended up."
With information from the Télam Agency