A back-room deal between two politicians is set to make the Dominican Republic the first country to enshrine three current Vatican policies in its new Constitution. One amendment is expected to increase dangerous back-alley abortions and unwanted births in a poor country where more than a third can’t afford enough to eat. But for the Catholic Church it marks a milestone in its programme to promote reproduction at all costs.
Un acuerdo a puerta cerrada celebrado el mes pasado entre dos políticos ha encaminado a la República Dominicana a convertirse en el primer país en consagrar tres políticas actuales del Vaticano en su nueva Constitución. Una enmienda dice que "el derecho a la vida es inviolable desde la concepción hasta la muerte". Los otros dos definen la familia (en lugar del individuo) como la unidad fundamental de la sociedad, y el matrimonio como la unión de un hombre y una mujer.
After the various Dominican constitutions became successively more secular, the Vatican checked this evolution through a concordat. In 1954 the dictator Trujillo granted the Church privileges in return for Vatican recognition of his murderous regime. The dictator is now gone but, despite protests, the concordat remains.
On 21 April 2009 constitutional amendments were passed which enshrine key doctrines of the Catholic Church and could limit human rights, especially those of women and gays.
Generalissimo Trujillo got himself a concordat the year after his hero, the Spanish Generalissimo Franco, and his, too, made Catholicism the state religion. The dictator is long gone, but not his concordat. On 22 October 2008 the Dominican Supreme Court ruled that this concordat did not infringe on religious freedom.
At the end of this concordat is the 1990 Supplement where – apparently with no negotiation – the Vatican was allowed to place the civilian police under the powerful Military Ordinary, Cardinal Archbishop Nicolás de Jesús López Rodríguez.
Can anyone locate and send in the complete text of this 1958 agreement with La Obra de Cooperación Sacerdotal Hispanoamericana? It's called El Patronato Nacional San Rafael, apparently a flattering reference to the dictator Rafael Leonidas Trujillo.
