Pope creates ecclesiastical quango (a Christ-free zone) and appoints Argentinian cronies to run it
Francis has created a social rights body
What does the Pope want with the appointment of Eugenio Zaffaroni and Andrés Gallardo to the Vatican?
Within the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, Francis granted institutional status to the "Pan-American Committee of Judges for Social Rights", appointed Argentinean judge Roberto Gallardo as its President and former judge Eugenio Zaffaroni as President of the Academic Board of the "Institute for the Research and Promotion of Social Rights".
Pope Francis created the "Fray Bartolomé de las Casas" Institute within the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences and appointed Raúl Eugenio Zaffaroni, a former member of the Supreme Court of Justice, as president of its academic board. The institute will operate within the "Pan-American Committee of Judges for Social Rights and Franciscan Doctrine" (COPAJU) as a "private association of the faithful with an international character", which the Pope simultaneously established by means of a document published this Friday in the Vatican. In the same act he appointed as president of COPAJU (for the period 2023-2028) the Argentinian judge Roberto Andrés Gallardo. Jorge Bergoglio said he was taking this decision "echoing the request made by its founders".
In the resolution creating the institute, which will be chaired by Zaffaroni and which will have "academic, teaching and training purposes on the subject of social rights, migration and colonialism", the Pope also resolved that it "will be financially supported, directed and administered by COPAJU and will function within the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences". The Founding Academic Board will also include Alberto Filippi and Marcelo Suárez Orozco.
Zaffaroni (83 years old) was a member of the Supreme Court of Justice between 2003 and 2014 and judge of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in the period 2016-2022, and is a figure of great prestige and a permanent source of consultation in the field of law at the international level. The former judge has been closely linked to Néstor Kirchner and Vice-President Cristina Fernández, for whom he requested a pardon as a final alternative to the judicial conviction, on the understanding that there is persecution against the former president.
COPAJU was constituted on 4 June 2019 at a meeting held in the Vatican, "under the inspiration of the words of His Holiness Pope Francis", according to its founding act signed by the Pope himself. Since then, the body has been led by a board of promoters headed by Judge Gallardo, born in 1964 and a graduate of the University of Buenos Aires, who currently serves as a Judge of First Instance in Administrative and Tax Litigation of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires.
In March of this year, in a meeting held in the Vatican in which Zaffaroni, Gallardo, the deputy Vanesa Siley (Frente de Todos) and judicial leaders from all over the world took part, a warning was issued about "lawfare" as a "phenomenon of political domination and economic subjugation". On that occasion, Gallardo denounced the "logic of subjugation and neo-colonialism" that affects the judicial system.
The decision taken now by the Pope can be read as a strong support for the action of the judges whose objective is to "generate a permanent tool whose central aim is to promote the enforceability and justiciability of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights, in pursuit of the effectiveness of such rights in favour of the most vulnerable people" through "positive actions aimed at promoting and protecting the exercise, full and permanent enjoyment of economic, social, cultural and environmental rights".
"The creation of the 'Fray Bartolomé de las Casas' Institute of Legal Research with a focus on Social Rights, Migration and Colonialism, is an excellent decision by Francisco. It focuses on the need to train in order to transform," Gallardo told Página/12. "In an academic world with a profound technocratic, unidirectional and dehumanised bias, Francis proposes a disruptive wedge. It is no coincidence that he appoints intellectuals such as Zaffaroni, Filippi and Suárez Orozco as his founding board. This triad is a definition in itself, as is the placement of the Institute in the Pontifical Academy of Sciences," added the magistrate.
The resolution signed by Francisco recognises that "COPAJU has developed a prolific task aimed at the protection and promotion of social rights from the magistracy, placing special emphasis on the discarded social sectors, affected by the different processes of neo-colonialism", which has erected national chapters in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Mexico, the United States and Paraguay, and that "it is in permanent expansion throughout the rest of the American continent".
Gallardo recalled that "we have been working on the project for several years and we are convinced that it is a genuine and necessary tool for the judges of the three Americas", and pointed out that with the Pope's recognition "COPAJU is further strengthened as an ecumenical organisation of magistrates, committed to Social Rights and the Franciscan Doctrine that brings together, organises and defends judges who watch over human dignity and planetary integrity". According to the magistrate, "no judicial decision can fail to privilege human dignity above all else. Dignified life is the axis around which the social and political process of peoples must revolve".
Regarding his appointment, Gallardo said: "I am happy and committed" because "there is a long way to go and great challenges on the horizon, but this decision of the Pope brings a lot of energy and hope, we are many in the same direction and that brings harmony and security". Gallardo will be accompanied by judge Ana Algorta Latorre (Brazil) as vice-president, Gustavo Daniel Moreno (Argentina) as secretary, and as members, by judges María Julia Figueredo (Colombia), Tamila Ipema (United States), Daniel Urrutia Laubreaux (Chile) and Janet Tello Gilardi (Peru).
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