I don't remember hearing the name of Jorge Mario Bergoglio, who became Pope Francis in March, or any of his fellow Argentinian Jesuits when I was in Buenos Aires in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. They seemed strangely silent in such harrowing times when the fundaments of decent civilization were being set at nought throughout the Western Hemisphere at the multiplying demands of the Cold War.

POPE FRANCIS: Untying the Knots, by Paul Vallely. Bloomsbury, 2013, 224 pp., $20.95 (paperback)

They kept their peace, for instance, when their brother Bishop Enrique Angelelli was murdered by the country's uniformed terrorists at the orders of Gen. Jorge Videla and Adm. Emilio Massera.