It reads like a genuine mystery: *Bergoglio and the Books of Esther* (Città Nuova, 2017), an investigation by international reporter and judicial chronicler Nello Scavo. What became of the books that Esther Balestrino—a biochemical pharmacist and communist sympathizer—handed over to Jorge Mario Bergoglio in 1977?
One of the three founders of the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, Esther feared retaliation from General Videla's military regime. She entrusted her rich Marxist library to the priest who had once worked in her laboratory and had since become provincial superior of the Argentine Jesuits. ("These were books Esther had read, leafed through, underlined. Books she loved and had reflected on. Though the future Pope Francis steered clear of Marxist theory, Father Jorge hid them and protected them as if they were people.")
Her fears were justified. She was disappeared and murdered by the military in a death flight. For four decades, Esther's Marxist library vanished without trace: burned? destroyed? lost? A mystery now solved by Scavo's book.
But reading these pages reveals another horrifying story. When Esther is seized in the Church of the Holy Cross in Buenos Aires by former Navy Captain Alfredo Astiz on December 8, 1977, she is not alone. Eleven other people are caught in the net with her—mothers and relatives of the disappeared, and two French nuns. Alice Domon and Leonie Duquet, religious sisters who work with children with disabilities.
Leonie had become especially close to a young boy, Alejandro, who has Down syndrome. Alejandro's father was among the most powerful men in Argentina at that time: General Videla. The head of the military junta thus knew these two nuns personally—they were family friends. Alejandro, Scavo writes, "had become so attached to Sister Leonie that he refused to go home; he wanted only to stay with her. 'He would cry and scream because he wanted to be with Leonie,' recalls elderly Sister Yvonne. It was not enough to save their lives. Videla showed no mercy to the nuns. In truth, he showed none to his own son Alejandro either."
Giulia Galeotti, 2018