She is most notable for her connection to the future Pope Francis and her forced disappearance (abduction and murder) in Argentina by the military dictatorship of the National Reorganization Process (1976–1983).

[4] In December 1977, Ballestrino, Sisters Alice and Léonie, along with other Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, prepared a request for the names of those who disappeared and for the government to divulge their whereabouts.

[6] Ballestrino and María Ponce de Bianco were seized by the security forces in the Church of Santa Cruz in downtown Buenos Aires.

[4] The women were taken to a detention centre by the Argentine security services, where they were tortured and then dropped into the sea from an aircraft whilst presumably still living, something referred to as death flight.

It was not until 2003 that further information led to more exhumations by the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team, which identified the eight bodies, including five women who had disappeared in 1977: Ballestrino, Azucena Villaflor, María Ponce de Bianco, Angela Auad, and Sister Léonie Duquet.

[5] Documents from the United States government, declassified in 2002, show that the American government knew in 1978 that the bodies of the French nuns Alice Domon and Léonie Duquet, and the Madres de Plaza de Mayo Azucena Villaflor, Esther Ballestrino, and María Ponce, had been found on the beaches of Buenos Aires Province.

March 28 story filed from Paris reports that the bodies of the two French nuns (Alicia Doman and Renee Duguet) (sic) who were abducted in mid December with eleven other human rights activists were identified among corpses near Bahía Blanca.

Buenos Aires was filled with such rumors over a month ago based on accounts of the discovery of a number of cadavers beached by unusually strong winds along Atlantic Sea, points closer to the mouth of La Plata River some 300-350 miles to the north of Bahía Blanca.

(Name redacted), which has been trying to track down these rumors, has confidential information that the nuns were abducted by Argentine security agents and at some point were transferred to a prison located in the town of Junín, which is 150 miles west of Buenos Aires.

Embassy also has confidential information through an Argentine government source (protected) that seven bodies were discovered some weeks ago on the beach near Mar del Plata.

Our source confirmed that these individuals were originally sequestered by members of the security forces acting under a broad mandate against terrorists and subversives.