SÃO PAULO, Brazil – In Argentina, the Catholic Church is one of the most active institutions in resisting President Javier Milei’s policy of dismantling things marking the military dictatorship in Argentina (1976-1983), according to a leading sociologist.

Over the past few months, the Libertarian Milei has been taking several measures to reduce the social relevance of the state institutions created since the 1980s with the goal of safeguarding documents and historic items connected to the regime, which claimed at least 30,000 lives.

In fact, even the number of victims of the military junta that took control over the South American nation in 1976 has been continually challenged by him since the presidential campaign. He argues that less than a third of the 30,000 people traditionally estimated as the number of victims were actually killed.

The attacks from the Milei administration to the pillars of the policy of memory, truth, and justice are not only ideological – with a fierce denialism of the crimes perpetrated by the regime – but also have material nature.

Over the past few months, he has been firing hundreds of State employees who worked in agencies connected to the effort of keeping alive the horrors of the regime, such as cultural centers and State archives.

In that process, nongovernmental organizations like the Mothers and Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, groups that try to find the sons and daughters of the victims of the dictatorship who were sent to adoptive families by the junta, have been playing an important role.

However, the Catholic Church has been the most influential institution to assume such a stance.

“There’s a great social fragmentation in the Argentinian society at this point. At the same time, this administration’s policy of cruelty is disconcerting. Many groups in the opposition can’t find the adequate rhetoric now,” said Fortunato Mallimaci, an expert in religion and a professor at the University of Buenos Aires.

But the Church, which has been accused for decades of being close to the regime – Catholics have been accused of even assisting in stealing the dissidents’ babies and taking them to other families – is now the major institution in the symbolic opposition to Milei, Mallimaci told Crux.

“The Church not only has a very significant social presence, but it also has a solid doctrine that gives to it the foundations of its criticism of Milei’s policies against human rights,” he added.

Since the beginning of Milei’s government, the Church has been criticizing his economic reforms, which have included cuts in relief programs and pensions. The radical ideas fostered by him and other members of his administration have also been criticized by Catholics on several occasions.

On Jan. 3, after hundreds of workers in memory, truth, and justice agencies had been fired, Father Lorenzo “Toto” de Vedia, a well-known slum priest in Buenos Aires, celebrated a Mass at the building of the Navy School of Mechanics (ESMA), a major illegal detention center during the regime that now serves as a museum and site of memory.

The Mass was organized after a Catholic employee asked the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires to do so. Indeed, Father Toto said so during the celebration.

“The bishops of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires have asked me to celebrate this Mass, showing clear concern for the dismissal of so many workers from the former ESMA. Thus, we are present, also representing the priests from working-class neighborhoods and shantytowns throughout the country,” he told the participants, among them long-time human rights activists, like the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Adolfo Pérez Esquivel.

Father Toto also said that “memory is very necessary to stop making mistakes against the most disadvantaged” in society.

“The commitment to truth must force us to fight against so many deceptions that our working people continue to suffer. May the mother of the Argentine people, the Virgin of Luján, protect us so that we can continue to accompany those who are falling and have to get up,” he added.

One of the groups that were present at that Mass was the Curas Por la Opción Por Los Pobres (Priests for the Option for the Poor), who have been one of the most vocal opponents to Milei among Catholics.

Spanish-born Father Francisco “Paco” Olvera, one of its members, said he fears the risk of relevant documents and other items being destroyed or simply “lost” now that the government is promoting a wave of attacks on memory institutions.

“They are shutting down those entities now and we cannot know what we will encounter when they are eventually reopened,” Father Paco told Crux.

He said that the current administration has a “denialist” stance regarding the “real genocide suffered by the Argentinian people during the civil-ecclesiastical-military dictatorship,” one that goes beyond the “theory of two demons,” which tries to equate the acts of violence perpetrated by dissidents with the acts of repression by state agents.

“The Church has been involved in the struggle against it, something that the Jan. 3 Mass demonstrated. But it would have been much stronger and more beautiful if the archbishop himself presided over the celebration,” Father Paco said.

Mallimaci said Milei has been repeating that the memory institutions are full of “Peronists” and “leftists” and that it’s necessary to clean up the state of such “progressives.” His attacks on the rights of women, social minorities, and on the idea of social justice haven’t found a coherent contradiction in the political parties of the opposition till now, he added.

“The most innovative element in Argentina’s society now is that the Catholic Church has been playing the role of institutional opposition to the government,” he said.