Abal Medina: CFK, Pope meeting was a 'very important gesture'

Cabinet Chief Juan Manuel Abal Medina praised yesterday's meeting between President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and Pope Francis at the Vatican’s Santa Marta House, saying he considered it a “very important gesture.”

“The meeting with our President was a very important gesture. It is also important that the new Pope took two hours and a half to have lunch and talk” with her, the Victory Front official said at the San Martín University in the province of Buenos Aires, and pointed out that significant issues for Argentines -such as the dispute with the UK over the sovereignty of Malvinas Islands- were addressed by both leaders.

The approach to Latin America’s new political scenario – which the ex BA City Archsbishop Jorge Mario Bergoglio alludes to as “Patria Grande”- and the Pope’s position over the problem of poverty and the building of a fairer world are, according to Abal Medina, aligned with the government’s mainstays.

Proof of such understanding, the official added, was “the thrill the President and the majority of Argentines feel (and) that talk about a future that is being built.”