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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (RNS) — Vatican analysts and ordinary Argentines have long speculated that Pope Francis delayed his homecoming until it was too late to avoid exacerbating Argentina’s deep polarization, known locally as “la grieta,” or the rift.
On the streets of Buenos Aires as Pope Leo XIV arrived, posters and graffiti revealed some of those deep tensions. Here are a few political messages RNS saw:
Finally, a Leo that unites us
These posters, which popped up in many different neighborhoods of the city, are a play on words. “Leo” and “lion” are the same word in Spanish, and the lion is a core symbol for Argentine President Javier Milei. Milei’s approval rating in September was below 4 in 10 (38.5%), according to an AtlasIntel poll, which is similar to his also polarizing U.S. ally, President Donald Trump.
Milei has presided over economic austerity in response to inflation, including cuts to the social safety net, education funding and environmental protection.
Anti-Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández posters
These showed up along the route that Leo’s popemobile took on Sunday night (Nov. 8). They said in large letters, “Holy Father: for the good of the church, remove Tucho,” using the Argentine cardinal’s nickname, with a QR code claiming to contain a link to “public heresy” from a Fernández homily in 2023.
Fernández was appointed the top official, or prefect, for the Vatican’s doctrine office, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 2023 under Francis. He has remained in his position through the beginning of Leo’s papacy, but he has often been a target of conservative ire.
After he was appointed to the doctrine office, it released a document allowing for informal blessings of unmarried and same-sex couples, which dismayed many conservatives. They also resurfaced earlier theological work, like “Heal Me With Your Mouth: The Art of Kissing” and “Mystical Passion: Spirituality and Sensuality” as evidence of his heterodoxy.
But these posters refer to a homily in which Fernández praised Francis for helping Catholics move beyond the established frameworks for the reception of Communion. At the bottom of the poster, it says, “here we know him well.”
Francis and Fernández were close over many years. When Fernández was rector of the Universidad Católica Argentina, he established a center to study social inequality in 2002, a move Francis praised. Fernández also served as a theological adviser to the future pope when then-Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio attended the 2007 Latin American bishops’ meeting in Aparecida, Brazil. The resulting document is widely seen as a blueprint for Francis’ papacy.
Communist newspaper promising to continue Francis’ fight for “tierra, techo y trabajo”
Under the bridge outside Palermo, one of the main subway stations serving passengers arriving to the Monumento de los Españoles for a Mass on Monday and a youth vigil on Tuesday, someone pasted two apparently communist newspapers.
The top reads in Spanish, “Pope Leo XIV arrives in an Argentina where the fights against the policies of hunger, misery, layoffs and looting of our sovereignty and repression of the Milei government. We encourage coming together with the majority of those who mobilize themselves for this papal visit in the fight for a country free from the imperialist oppression, the intermediate bourgeoisie and the plantations of the landowners.”
The bottom features an image of the Rev. Carlos Francisco Sergio Mugica Echagüe, a Catholic priest who founded the “curas villeros” movement, whose members lived and worked in poor neighborhoods. He was assassinated in 1974. He was seen as close to the Peronist movement, the influential Argentine political movement founded by President Juan Perón, who led the country in the 1940s, 1950s and 1970s.
Feminist graffiti on masculine language
On some official visit signs along the route Leo took on his first day, someone crossed out the “o” in “Bienvenidos a Todos” and replaced it with “e.” The feminist movement in Latin America has advocated using the gender-neutral “e,” instead of the masculine “o,” to signify a mixed-gender audience.
The gender-neutral “e” has yet to become mainstream, but Milei banned its use in official government documents in 2024.
Francis was well known for advocating for a church that includes everyone with the phrase, “todos, todos, todos,” but but this protest seems to imply it should be “todos, todas, todes.”