The Pope's letter to console Dilma

By Darío Pignotti, in Major Card

Blessed by Francis. The coup being plotted against Dilma Rousseff has not found favor with the Pope, a disagreement that, in recent months, he has been hinting at through a series of discreet, pontifical gestures. Possibly the most eloquent was the correspondence he sent to the president who is about to be removed from office.
 
“He (Francis) wrote me a letter, but I will not say anything more about it, I will only say that it was not an official letter, it was not a letter from the Pope as a representative of the Vatican, it is not a letter to be made public,” declared Dilma, before adding that “I would very much like to be received by the Pope, it is always a pleasure.” Although the text of the correspondence remains confidential, anyone who can decipher the signs understands that it is a letter of support, even more so when placed in the context of the fluid political relationship built by both in recent years.
 
The connection began in March 2013, when Dilma Rousseff, a non-practicing Catholic who had broken off dialogue with Joseph Ratzinger – the German Pope who openly campaigned against Dilma and supported the conservative candidate José Serra in the 2010 presidential elections – traveled to the Vatican, where she was received by Bergoglio, who hours later would assume the position of head of state of the Vatican. A former seminarian who was at that meeting said that Dilma congratulated him on being the first Latin American Pope, and received in response a statement: "Latin American and Peronist." "That's where an empathy began between the two," said this direct witness to the meeting. The affinity between the two continued, and Dilma's government supported the World Youth Day, celebrated in July 2013 in Rio de Janeiro, with logistics and political initiatives. On that occasion, they met again.
 
This Thursday (August 18), Rousseff gave an interview to foreign correspondents at the Alvorada Palace, a building adjacent to the Jaburu Palace, where the current interim president Michel Temer lives, who is ready to move residence.

Temer is already working with the certainty – the same certainty shared by almost everyone – that by the end of this month he will cease to be an interim president and will become the permanent one, with the right to occupy the Palácio da Alvorada (Presidential Palace), once Dilma's more than likely impeachment is consummated in the political trial held by the Senate, a flawed and biased process. "They want to condemn me without me having committed any crime," complained Dilma, seven days before the start of the trial.
 
Pope Francis's letter demonstrates his possible disagreement with an anomalous process against a legitimate president, but it also deserves to be evaluated for its diplomatic implications in a region where Catholicism still prevails, besieged by neoconservative evangelism – a political-religious current whose main representatives include the powerful Eduardo Cunha, one of the strongmen of the new government, a long-time partner of Michel Temer, and also the main person responsible for the initiation and evolution of the process against Dilma Rousseff.
 
The Workers' Party leader sees that beneath the "parliamentary coup" lies the threat of political despotism and repression. When the interview touched on the authoritarian tendencies of several members of the current cabinet, she recommended verses by Bertolt Brecht. She was possibly referring to those in which the playwright recounted how Nazism grew stronger in a German society increasingly tolerant of barbarity. It's clear the topic concerns her: just over a month ago she spoke about how the coup disguises itself through an "anomalous everyday life," and cited the "banality of evil" of the German philosopher Hannah Arendt.
 
In this new Brazil, approaching a new post-democratic stage, declarations calling for political intolerance and witch hunts are frequent. The air is thick with the smell of revenge against the Workers' Party (PT) and against Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who could be prevented from running in 2018 through some forced judicial conviction.
 
When asked about the risk of the PT being outlawed or disappearing, Dilma said that neither of those scenarios was likely.
 
“A party with the size and tradition of the PT is the fruit of an entire social movement, stemming from the tradition of laborism since (former president) Getúlio Vargas and Leonel Brizola (a nationalist leader who resisted the 1964 coup), from the awakening of the labor movement with Lula. The PT is the fruit of the religious movement, the awakening of the women's, black, and indigenous movements. It is the fruit of a change in the base of society and the affirmation of citizenship, with the people as the subject. The PT is a break with the idea that the Brazilian people have to be submissive. It is the result of a very strong process of political representation. I believe that the PT will know how to overcome the difficult processes it is going through.”
 
Dilma confirmed that she will personally go to the Senate to defend herself in the trial she will face, probably on August 29th. “Congress doesn't belong to anyone; it's necessary to contest all democratic spaces. I will not give them (adversaries) a monopoly on spaces, nor on the other institutions of the country. I cannot allow myself to waver at this moment, and ask myself questions like 'what if this or that happens?' I must fight.”