Moro, the Brazilian Savonarola – 02/03/2024 – Elio Gaspari

Girolamo Savonarola (1452-1498) was a Florentine friar who rose from obscurity to fame in a few years. He began preaching against the corruption of the Church and Florence in 1490, when Leonardo da Vinci met his boyfriend. In 1495, when a second-rate sculptor broke Michelangelo’s nose, the friar radicalized his speech, threatening the authority of Pope Alexander 6th (Rodrigo Borgia, made cardinal at the age of 25, was the father of at least four children).

Two years later, Savonarola owned the city of Machiavelli and Sandro Botticelli. Preaching against luxury, he burned cards, poetry, sculptures and paintings in a great “bonfire of vanities”.

There were many enemies. Savonarola was excommunicated in 1497 and challenged in March 1498. Arrested and tortured, he confessed to being crazy. He was hanged and burned in Florence’s beautiful square. There remain sermons, some portraits and his cell in the convent. A small plaque on the ground marks the place of his execution. On the other side of the world, the Portuguese Vasco da Gama knew about bananas.

Only in 1517, far from Italy, another friar, the German Martin Luther, began a turnaround in relations with the Papacy, opening the schism of Protestantism. Little remains of Savonarola. Squeezing, almost nothing. Because he listened to him, Sandro Botticelli burned some of his paintings and never painted properly again.

Pindorama of the 21st century has nothing to do with the Florence of the 16th. It lacks Leonardo, Machiavelli and Michelangelo. Sergio Moro, however, followed a similar path to Savonarola. In just a few years he went from the obscurity of a court in Curitiba to the fame of Operation Lava Jato. Like him, he became owner of the city, embodying the fight against gross, proven and confessed corruption.

Moro made many enemies. Time passed, and the judge from Curitiba, excommunicated by the Federal Supreme Court, was elected senator and is on his way to losing his mandate at the Regional Electoral Court of Paraná. He was close to the trial, but the assembly of the gallows was postponed, while his sermons crumbled. His Lava Jato has been meticulously dismantled and has now entered the phase of pecuniary indulgences.

Minister Dias Toffoli, of the Federal Supreme Court, opened the season by suspending the R$10.3 billion fine for the Batista brothers, from J&F. Last week, he suspended the agreement and the fine from Novonor (formerly Odebrecht).

With two strokes of the pen, companies received the expectation of relief worth around R$15 billion, equivalent to the monthly cost of the Bolsa Família program, which supports more than 40 million people. With such good winds, Léo Pinheiro, former president of OAS, announced that he will appeal to the minister. He won’t be the last in line, as there are many others talking to their lawyers.

With his reasons, Toffoli suspended fines that resulted from an agreement made by the companies, seeking leniency due to illicit acts that, admittedly, they had committed.

For Odebrecht, 77 company executives signed, including patriarch Emílio and his son Marcelo. The powerful heir was sentenced to 19 years in prison by Moro in 2016. With his collaboration, his sentence was reduced to ten years and the Supreme Court reduced it to seven and a half years. He’s free.

In Florence in the 16th century, the effects of Friar Savonarola’s preaching only began to be eradicated after he was burned and his ashes were thrown into the river that runs through the city. In Pindorama do 21, Moro will climb the scaffold with the Lava Jato ashes kept in the Judiciary archives.

The similarities between Savonarola and Moro are erased by the size of the difference following their preaching against corruption. Called by Pope Borgia, the friar did not go to Rome. Called by Bolsonaro, Moro went to the Ministry of Justice in the country of Macunaíma. He later joined his court during the 2022 succession debates.

Women at Abin

Lula appointed five women to head departments at the Brazilian Intelligence Agency, Abin. Anyone who thinks that women in these positions can mean refreshment is wrong.

Donald Trump placed the first woman at the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA. A career employee, Gina Haspel headed the agency’s clandestine prison in Thailand and worked at the Guantanamo Bay interrogation center. Unlike many grown men in Brasília, she does not participate in social networks. Three other CIA employees were decisive in locating terrorist Osama Bin Laden in 2011.

Not to mention Englishwoman Daphne Park (1921-2010), who became Baroness Park of Monmouth in 1990. She traveled the world and was in the Congo in 1961 when former Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba was assassinated. Shortly before she died, she reportedly revealed to a colleague in the House of Lords that “it was us”.

It seems not. The excellent book “The Lumumba Plot”, by Stuart Reid, editor of Foreign Affairs magazine, came out a few months ago. At the scene of Lumumba’s shooting were a squad of Congolese and four Belgian police officers.

LINK PRESENT: Did you like this text? Subscribers can access five free accesses from any link per day. Just click the blue F below.