The remote battle between Pope Francis and Javier Milei, favorite in the fight for the Argentine presidency, added a new chapter this week: the head of the Catholic Church, Argentine, warned his compatriots of danger of following “a Messiah.”
“We were all young people without experience and sometimes boys and girls cling to miracles, to messiahs, to things being resolved in a messianic way. The Messiah is only one who saved us all. The rest are all messianic clowns,” Francisco said during an interview with the official Télam news agency.
“No one can promise the resolution of conflicts, if it is not through crises going upwards. And not only. Let’s think of any type of political crisis, in a country that does not know what to do, in Europe there are several… what is done? Do we look for a messiah to come and save us from outside? No. Let’s look for where the conflict is, let’s grab it and resolve it. Managing conflicts is wisdom. But without conflicts we can’t move forward,” added Francisco, 86 years old.
The leader of the Catholic Church maintains a dull duel at a distance with Milei, a populist ultra-liberal who leads the polls for this Sunday’s elections in the third largest economy in Latin America.
Years ago, Milei described the Pope as “the evil one.” A few weeks ago, during an interview with the ultraconservative American journalist Tucker Carlson, He harshly attacked Francis: “The Pope plays politically, he has strong political interference, he has shown great affinity with dictators like Castro and Maduro, “is on the side of bloody dictatorships.”
After that statement, Milei was questioned in the second presidential debate by Sergio Massa, the Peronist candidate.
“You offended the leader of the Church. Take advantage of these 45 seconds to ask the Pope for forgiveness, who is the most important Argentine in history”.
The question confused Milei, and Massa repeated “do it” three times, with his microphone off, which unleashed the ultraliberal’s anger and the intervention of the debate moderators,
“Let me speak and be respectful,” Milei demanded of the current Minister of Economy: “I said that if the Pope wanted to come to Argentina, I was going to respect him. Stop chicanering (tangling) and dedicate yourself to lowering inflation and ending your government in a decent manner.”