ROME (AFP) - Pope Francis was "not complicit" with Argentina's brutal military dictatorship and maintained a "diplomatic silence," Nobel Peace Prize laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel said on Thursday after meeting with Latin America's first pontiff.

"He was not complicit with the dictatorship, he did not collaborate. He preferred a diplomatic silence," he told reporters, following criticism of the pope for having failed to speak out against the 1976-1983 regime when he was the head of Argentina's Jesuits.