The Episcopal Conference of Argentina has rebuked a priest who played an integral role in organizing a meeting between multiple dictatorship-era genocidaires and five legislators from the ruling La Libertad Avanza (LLA) coalition at Ezeiza Prison on July 11.
“The words and actions of the priest Javier Olivera Ravasi related to a group of deputies’ visit to Ezeiza Prison do not reflect the thoughts and attitudes of the Episocopal Conference of Argentina,” the organization’s spokesperson Máximo Jurcinovic wrote in an X thread on Monday. “The aforementioned priest acted of his own accord. The visit in question is currently being investigated by the Federal Justice of Lomas de Zamora.”
“The view of the Argentine Church on this matter can be found in the three-volume document published last year titled ‘The truth will set them free’ commissioned by the Episocopal Conference of Argentina at the Argentine Catholic University,” the statement continued.
Last week, a leaked photo of the LLA legislators with repressors Alfredo Astiz, also known as the “Angel of Death,” Raúl Guglielminetti, Adolfo Donda, and Antonio Pernías caused an uproar among human rights organizations and the opposition Justicialist Party (PJ), with one Peronist deputy, Gisela Marziotta, calling for the officials’ expulsion from the Lower House. Marziotta accused her fellow congressmen of perpetrating “activities against the constitutional order, democratic pacts, and human rights.”
According to Data Clave, the Argentine website that first published the picture, the five congressmen and women are part of a group of 13 LLA legislators reportedly seeking to free the repressors or transfer them to house arrest. Several of these deputies have communicated via WhatsApp with Olivera Ravasi — a priest with longstanding ties to Vice President Victoria Villarruel.
Oliveira Ravasi’s father, Jorge Oliveira, is currently serving a life sentence for crimes against humanity during the Argentine dictatorship that killed and disappeared an estimated 30,000 people between 1976 and 1983.
Last month, LLA legislator Lourdes Arrieta told the outlet Noticiero 9 that she was unfamiliar with the inmates with whom she visited and posed for a photograph, saying, “I had to Google them when I left the prison to know who they were.”
On Wednesday, a federal court opened an investigation into the claims of Arrieta and other LLA deputies that they were tricked into the July 11 visit.