section_path: Argentine government relations/Néstor and Cristina Kirchner
section_name: Néstor and Cristina Kirchner
paragraph_text: Néstor and Cristina Kirchner
  
  When Bergoglio celebrated Mass at the cathedral for the 2004 First National Government holiday, President Néstor Kirchner attended and heard Bergoglio request more political dialogue, the rejection of intolerance, and the criticism of exhibitionism and strident announcements. Kirchner celebrated the national day elsewhere the following year and the Mass in the cathedral was suspended. In 2006, Bergoglio helped fellow Jesuit Joaquín Piña win the elections in the Misiones Province and prevent an amendment to the local constitution that would allow indefinite re-elections. Kirchner intended to use that project to start similar amendments at other provinces and eventually implement it in the national constitution. Kirchner considered Bergoglio as a political rival until he died in 2010. Bergoglio's relations with Kirchner's widow and successor, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, have been similarly tense. In 2008, Bergoglio called for national reconciliation during disturbances in the country's agricultural regions, which the government interpreted as a support for anti-government demonstrators. The campaign to enact same-sex marriage legislation was a particularly tense period in their relations.
  
  When Bergoglio was elected pope, initial reactions were mixed. Most of the Argentine society cheered it, but the pro-government newspaper Página 12 published renewed allegations about the Dirty War, and the president of the National Library described a global conspiracy theory. The president took more than an hour before congratulating the new pope and did so only in a passing reference within a routine speech. Due to the Pope's popularity in Argentina, Cristina Kirchner made what the political analyst Claudio Fantini called a " Copernican shift " in her relations with him and fully embraced the Francis phenomenon. On the day before his inauguration as pope, Bergoglio, now Francis, had a private meeting with Kirchner where they exchanged gifts and lunched together. This was the new pope's first meeting with a head of state, and there was speculation that the two were mending their relations. Página 12 then removed their controversial articles about Bergoglio from their web page as a result of this change.