Pope Francis Prays for Alberto Nisman’s Memory
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(JTA) — Pope Francis told the former wife of the late Argentine special prosecutor Alberto Nisman that he prays for Nisman’s memory and their two daughters.
Sandra Arroyo Salgado, a federal judge in Argentina, asked the pope during their brief audience Wednesday to “keep praying to find the truth” of Nisman’s still-mysterious death. Salgado told Argentine radio La Red that the meeting she and her daughters had with the pope was “touching and repairing.”
It was the first time that Francis, a native of Argentina, had contact with relatives of Nisman since the Jewish prosecutor was found shot dead in his Buenos Aires apartment on Jan. 18, 2015. The murder came hours before he was to present evidence to Argentine lawmakers that then-President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner covered up Iran’s role in the 1994 AMIA Jewish center bombing. The attack killed 85 and wounded hundreds.
In 2005, Francis — then Jorge Bergoglio, a Jesuit archbishop — was the first public personality to sign a petition for justice in the AMIA bombing case, which officially remains unsolved.
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