BUENOS AIRES — He’s been to South Korea, Albania and Israel, spent time in Sri Lanka, Cuba and Bosnia. Just this month, the Vatican confirmed a trip to Mexico is planned for 2016, making it six Latin American countries Pope Francis will have visited — along with the United States — since his pontificate began in March 2013.
But there’s one nation notably missing from his itinerary to date: his native Argentina. It’s an omission that rankles but doesn’t surprise residents here, despite the popularity the pope enjoys and the national pride his surprise selection inspired.
While the Vatican insists the pontiff’s busy schedule dictates his travel schedule, the local Catholic faithful and analysts alike suspect it is Argentina’s complex political situation that is the main reason why the former Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio is steering clear of Buenos Aires, the city in which he was born and one he rarely left before being chosen pope.
And though he has smoothed ties with Argentina’s president, many recall the troubled relationship Cardinal Bergoglio had with Cristina Fernandez and her late husband and predecessor, Nestor Kirchner.
“I think he will come here when this government leaves,” said Martha Vera, a 64-year-old accountant who on a recent Sunday was studying a display detailing the future pope’s rise at Buenos Aires’ Metropolitan Cathedral. “He did not like the things [the Kirchners] said.”
As archbishop, Cardinal Bergoglio often clashed over social issues with his neighbors in the presidential Casa Rosada, which sits just feet away from the cathedral across the capital’s Plaza de Mayo. Tensions escalated, for instance, when Ms. Fernandez legalized same-sex marriage in 2010.
The Argentine president did meet with Francis in Rome in 2013 one day before he was formally inaugurated, the first head of state to meet with the new pope, and Ms. Fernandez also attended the Mass celebrated by Francis during his recent trip to Cuba.
But the president’s imminent departure — the term-limited Ms. Fernandez will leave office Dec. 10 — still does not smooth the way for a papal homecoming because Francis is worried about the bigger picture, said Mariano de Vedia, a commentator with the La Nacion daily and author of two books about the pope.
This year, the highly charged political atmosphere ahead of the Oct. 25 presidential election ruled out a papal visit from the get-go, Mr. de Vedia said. But with Argentina marking the bicentennial of its independence next July, a 2016 trip was long seen as almost certain.
Given that all main candidates vying to succeed Ms. Fernandez have sought to play up their ties to the first Argentinean pope, though, Francis apparently wants to see the electoral dust settle before he ventures onto Argentine soil. “He does not want his figure to be used,” Mr. de Vedia said. “He does not want to be taken advantage of” by whoever wins the election.
Francis also hopes that local leaders will first tackle key concerns of corruption, poverty and a rise in drug trafficking, said Gustavo Vera, a local opposition legislator and close personal friend of the pontiff’s. “Right now Argentina is pretty polarized; there is a lot of division,” Mr. Vera said. “When he comes to Argentina, it will be an inflection point, and he knows that.”
Coming home
Francis’ predecessors displayed none of the same qualms about returning home.
John Paul II made an epochal nine-day return to his native Poland in June 1979, eight months after his election as pope, generating wild enthusiasm and, many say, planting the seeds for the political revolt that would eventually end communist rule.
Now-retired German Pope Benedict XVI marked World Youth Day in Cologne in August 2005, four months after his elevation, and returned a year later for a lengthy, emotional tour of his native Bavaria.
The apparent cancellation of a papal bicentennial visit has caused disappointment in San Miguel de Tucuman, the northern Argentine city where delegates severed ties with Spain in 1816, and which next year will mark the anniversary with a major eucharistic congress.
Still, the Vatican maintains that logistics and protocol — not politics — made the journey impossible. Any trip to Argentina would necessarily include a visit to its neighboring countries in the Southern Cone, said Monsignor Guillermo Karcher, a Vatican protocol official and close Francis confidant.
“It does not just come down to the pope and Argentines’ wishes,” Monsignor Karcher said. “It also depends on the invitations from the Uruguayan and Chilean sides.”
And in the case of Chile, some damage control may in fact be needed, Mr. de Vedia said, as Francis, during his July visit to Bolivia, seemed to side with La Paz in the festering, century-old border dispute between the South American neighbors.
Monsignor Karchner recently told the Buenos Aires Herald an Argentina visit may be possible in 2017, but much of 2016 will be taken up with the duties of a Holy Year in Rome that Francis has declared.
Benedikt Steinschulte, an official at the Pontifical Council for Social Communication, also noted that Benedict XVI did wait six years before making an official state visit to Germany, even as he made more informal stops.
Francis, for his part, has not used opportunities for such “unofficial” trips to come home, even though his July visit to the Paraguayan capital of Asuncion put him a few miles from his home country’s border. But while Argentines may take it as such, his itinerary should not be mistaken for a political statement, Monsignor Karcher insisted.
“Germany and Poland are around the corner” from Rome, he said about Benedict and the German’s predecessor, John Paul II. But the city’s current bishop, Monsignor Karcher said, “can’t just get up, pack his bag and say, ’Now, I’m going to Argentina.’”
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