MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Milei says he has built a positive bond with Pope Francis

Milei and Francis met for over an hour, an unusually long encounter for the Pope with any foreign leader

Argentine President Javier Milei, who once called Pope Francis “nefarious” and other epithets, admitted Monday that he had to “reconsider some positions” after meeting in person with the leader of the Catholic faith and fellow Buenos Aires native.

But after calling the Pontiff “the most important Argentine” on Italian TV, he went on to rant against the role of the State and Communisim.

Milei admitted in his interview that “in a country like Argentina, which has so many Catholic roots” he “had to reconsider some positions and, from that moment on, we began to build a positive relationship” with Francis, with whom he spent over an hour in a private meeting, which far exceeded the length of most encounters with any foreign leader.

The Argentine president described the State as a criminal association and defined Communism as a sickness of the soul. He said that “when socialism has been well applied, they have murdered more than 6 million human beings.”

“Philosophically I am an anarcho-capitalist and therefore I feel a deep contempt for the State. I believe that the State is the enemy, I believe that the State is a criminal association,” he sentenced. “The method used in the market is an investment, trade, and the method of the State is precisely theft, and therefore the State is not only the largest criminal organization in the world but also the largest stationary thief in the world.”

“A thief attacks from time to time, but every time you go to buy something in a place, you are being robbed by the State through taxes; therefore, the State robs you every day,” Milei went on.

“The State has the power to arrest people, politicians are not affected, they don't see their power at stake. But in this, I realized that the only way to enter the system was to dynamite it,” he added.

Regarding the failure of his so-called Omnibus Law bill to pass through Congress, Milei insisted most of the draft consisted of structural reforms aimed at “giving power and freedom back to Argentines.”