Pope Francis has been managing church-state relations well since Javier Milei’s election, while the church hierarchy in Argentina has kept a cautious and skeptical distance from the country’s new leader.

President Bukele has used his emergency powers to detain more than 78,000 suspected gang members in security sweeps that human rights groups charge are often arbitrary and violent.

“We have to make ‘Evangelii Gaudium’ a reality,” Archbishop García Cuerva tell Gerard O’Connell. “We must make a reality Francis’ words, his documents, his vision of the church as a field hospital.”

In an exclusive interview with Gerard O’Connell, Archbishop Jorge Ignacio García Cuerva explains why his first three Masses in Buenos Aires were celebrated in a shanty town, prison and cemetery.

Pope Francis and Argentina’s President Javier Milei—who last year called the pope an “imbecile” and “representative of evil” while on the campaign trail—had “a very good and very friendly” hour-long conversation.

Dominicans celebrate the feast of Our Lady of Altagracia on Jan. 21. The image, which depicts an infant Jesus, Mary and Joseph, is the most popular devotion in the Caribbean nation. It has been for centuries.