Vatican’s Synod on Synodality organizers say synod is ‘fruit’ of Second Vatican Council

US President Joe Biden and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson watch the US Senate vote on whether to approve Judge Brown’s appointment to the US Supreme Court in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on April 7, 2022. / Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images.

Washington D.C., Apr 7, 2022 / 14:26 pm (CNA).

Ketanji Brown Jackson, a federal judge who also served as a federal public defender and a private practice lawyer, will become the first black woman to sit on the Supreme Court.

The Senate voted 53-47 Thursday to confirm Jackson, President Joe Biden’s pick to succeed Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, for whom Jackson once clerked.

Three Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, and Mitt Romney of Utah — joined with the Senate’s 50 Democrats to secure Jackson’s confirmation.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, the Senate majority leader, said Jackson’s historic confirmation reflected Democrats’ commitment to bring greater diversity to the U.S. judiciary. Biden pledged during his presidential campaign to choose a black woman as his first Supreme Court nominee.

“We certainly have a long way to go on the road to true justice, but by confirming Judge Jackson today, we are taking a bold step forward towards reaching the full realization of our country’s promise,” Schumer said.

“We will make it far more likely that girls across America will feel precisely what Judge Jackson felt herself when she was a kid: Nobody can stop me. I can do this, too. I am brilliant, too. I belong, too.”

Viewed as a progressive, “activist” judge by her conservative critics, Jackson won’t change the ideological balance of the court, where conservatives hold a 6-3 majority.

Nor will she participate in the upcoming Mississippi abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson, which many abortion opponents see as the best, and possibly last, chance to overturn the landmark 1973 decision Roe v. Wade that legalized abortion nationwide. A decision in Dobbs is expected at the end of June, just before she joins the court.

But at age 51, Jackson could serve on the nation’s highest court for decades to come.

Pro-life opposition

First nominated to a federal judgeship by President Barack Obama, Jackson had few direct dealings with the abortion issue as a U.S. District Court judge for the District of Columbia and an appellate court judge.

But her nomination drew strong opposition from pro-life groups. They pointed to the enthusiastic support her nomination received from Planned Parenthood, the largest abortion provider in the U.S., and a legal brief she co-authored as a private practice lawyer they say denigrated pro-life sidewalk counselors.

“Ketanji Brown Jackson’s confirmation fulfills President Biden’s promise to the abortion lobby and raises the stakes of this year’s critical midterm elections,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the national pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, said in a statement Thursday.

“As we await a decision in the Dobbs case, momentum is growing nationwide to protect unborn children and their mothers. Americans of all stripes want to modernize our extreme laws that allow abortion on demand up to birth, well after science shows babies in the womb feel pain. More than ever we need pro-life champions in the states and Washington who act on the will of the people and represent their values.”

After several days of questioning Jackson, the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday deadlocked, 11 to 11, along party lines, on whether to support her nomination. The tie vote made it necessary for the Senate to approve procedural steps to clear the path for a vote by the full Senate Thursday afternoon.

Democrats on the judiciary committee praised Jackson as a distinguished, even-handed jurist whose confirmation as the first black woman Supreme Court justice would mark a historic, inspirational milestone in U.S. history. 

Republicans, on the other hand, criticized her for what they saw as her record of judicial activism, and some Republicans maintained that she showed undue leniency in her sentencing of convicted child porn offenders, a charge her supporters denied.

Despite the pro-life opposition Jackson faced, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a self-described pro-life Democrat and Catholic, voted in favor of her confirmation.

“Today, I was proud to cast my vote to confirm Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States,” Manchin, a Catholic, said in a statement Thursday.

“Judge Jackson’s record and career are exemplary. She has shown tremendous grace through what has been a difficult confirmation process and has proven without a doubt that she has the temperament and credentials to serve on our nation’s highest court,” he added. “In doing so, she has bravely paved the way so future generations may follow in her footsteps.”

Federal experience

Born in Washington, D.C., Jackson grew up in the Miami area and earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard University, where she was the editor of the Harvard Law Review.

After her clerkship with Breyer, Jackson entered private practice and later served as a federal public defender in Washington, D.C., and vice chair and commissioner for the United States Sentencing Commission, a bi-partisan independent federal agency, prior to becoming a federal judge.

Jackson watched the confirmation vote Thursday with Biden at the White House. They are scheduled to give remarks together Friday afternoon at a White House ceremony.

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The Holy Door of St. Peter’s Basilica. / Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/EWTN News

ACI Prensa Staff, Dec 21, 2024 / 07:00 am (CNA).
The rite of opening the Holy Doors of the main basilicas of Rome to inaugurate the 2025 Jubilee Year is perhaps one of the… […]

Vatican City, Apr 27, 2018 / 06:20 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Vatican’s annual financial report this year showed that monitoring systems put into place nearly five years ago continue to be effective, however, there is still room to grow in terms of prosecution for questionable activities.

In comments to journalists during a May 27 press briefing, Rene Bruelhart, president of the Vatican’s Financial Intelligence Authority (AIF), said the report for 2017 shows “a clear commitment from our side to continue to report in the most transparent way possible on our activities.”

Two keywords that can sum up the AIF activities for 2017, he said, are “consolidation and normalization,” particularly in terms of implementing a sustainable regulatory and reporting system, as well as growing relations with domestic and international bodies.

Bruelhart, a Swiss lawyer, was tapped to head the AIF after it was established by Benedict XVI in 2010 to supervise the Vatican’s financial activity and prevent and counter money laundering.

Carried forward under Francis, the AIF works alongside other financial entities in the Vatican, such as the Secretariat for the Economy and the Council for the Economy, both of which were established by Pope Francis as part of his ongoing reform of the Roman Curia.

With full autonomy the AIF also monitors and reviews actions carried out by the Administration of the Patrimony of the Holy See (APSA), which oversees the Vatican’s real estate, and the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), more often referred to as the “Vatican bank.”

Bruelhart was present alongside AIF director Tommaso Di Ruzza at a May 27 press briefing on the AIF’s 6th annual report, which covered 2017 and summed up their continued efforts to build relationships with other states and crack down on suspicious financial activity within the Vatican.

Most notably, the report detailed that it was the AIF which first flagged the diversion of significant funds from the Vatican’s Bambino Gesu Children’s hospital to renovate Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone’s apartment in Rome.

The case exploded in the media, and in October 2017 the former president of the hospital, Giuseppe Profiti, and former treasurer, Massimo Spina, were been charged with the illicit use of hospital funds in the amount of 422,005.16 euros ($480,600.58) to refurbish the flat.

In total for 2017, 150 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) were filed with the AIF, compared to last year’s 207. The reason for the decrease, according to AIF Director Tommaso Di Ruzza, is that the quality of the entity’s reporting system has improved, “showing a growing awareness and strengthening of the control functions of the reporting subjects.”

Of the 150 flagged transactions, 8 were submitted by the AIF to the Vatican Office of the Promoter of Justice during 2017, of which nearly all involved potential financial crimes with foreign individuals or entities either within or in connection with a foreign jurisdiction.

The potential crimes flagged include international fraud, including fiscal fraud and market abuse.

In only one case did the Vatican tribunal freeze an account after a questionable cross-border transaction amounting to roughly 1,757 euro, or $2,122, which took place in 2016, which the AIF said it had flagged and submitted in 2015.

According to the report, none of the activities or transactions reported in 2017 were related to terrorism.

Since 2015, the AIF has presented some 54 reports to the Promoter of Justice. When asked why there has not been a higher number of cases prosecuted in the Vatican courts, which in the past has been identified as an area of weakness, Bruelhart said it will take time to adequately develop the system put into place, and is up to the Promoter of Justice to determine how to act on reports submitted by the AIF.

It is unclear how many of the 54 transactions flagged and sent to the Promoter of Justice have been looked into or investigated. However, “it’s important to remember where we’re coming form,” Bruelhart said, noting that the current system has been built only within the past 5-6 years, and new entities have been established, including the secretariat and council for the economy.

“It has been a new world” for the Promoter of Justice, he said, adding that in his view, the chain of activities that has taken place “has moved in the right direction” and “a lot of progress” has been made.

Noting how the first conviction took place just last year, he said “work is ongoing” in this area, and he expects to see more progress in the future.

“There is a very good dialogue with the office of the promoter of justice,” he said, adding that “it’s about building a dialogue together,” but ultimately the office is the only one responsible for what they decide to do.

Responding to criticism that the Vatican’s financial reform has made little progress, Bruelhart pointed to all the steps that have been taken so far in the past six years, saying if each of them are broken down, one can see that “a lot has been done in a very very short amount of time.”

Change, he said, takes time and at times one needs to take a step back to fully appreciate the progress and continue to go forward. “Its a process, but there is life in this process,” he said.

In addition, the AIF in 2017 also cracked down on transparency and accountability for donations made for institutional and charitable purposes, as well as interactions with what they have dubbed “high risk states” which do not have proper monitoring systems in place.

The crack down on transactions for charity and donations comes after a law was introduced Nov. 22, 2017, on the “Registration and Supervision of Non-Profit Organizations.”

The AIF also signed an additional 19 Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with foreign counterparts, bringing the bringing the number to 57, and exchanged information in some 282 cases.

In an April 27 press release on the AIF report, Di Ruzza stressed the importance of these relations, saying that “considering the potential risks linked to the universal projection of the Holy See, international cooperation is pivotal.”

These type of cross-border agreements are designed to crack down on money laundering and tax evasion, ensuring that the IOR does not become a tax haven.

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