Antonio Baseotto

Who is Antonio Baseotto?

Antonio Baseotto was a Roman Catholic bishop from Argentina. Until February 2005 he was Argentina's military bishop, that is, the head of the military chaplains, with the status of Subsecretary of State.

Baseotto was born on April 4, 1932 and ordained as a priest in 1957. In the 1980s, he served in the diocese of Añatuya, Santiago del Estero, a province ruled in a quasi-feudalistic fashion by the indefinitely-reelected old-time Peronist Carlos Juárez. During this time, he was reportedly in close relation with the Juárez family.

He was in charge of the Sunday programming schedule in a local TV channel and several times he was formally accused of anti-Semitism due to public statements on air. Among other things, in 1986 he affirmed that most of the Jewish community in Argentina "devotes itself, with much skill and often with very few moral principles, to big business... It does not matter the means... If pornography is good business, [the Jew] sells pornography. And if drugs are good business, he sells drugs...". He also claimed that "the means for spreading culture are in the hands of the Hebrews", who are "desintegrat[ing] the bases" of the national civilization and culture.