{"id":291834,"date":"2010-11-10T16:54:36","date_gmt":"2010-11-10T15:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/applying-the-law\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:40:35","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:40:35","slug":"applying-the-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/applying-the-law\/","title":{"rendered":"Applying the law"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong> \u201cI\u2019m 34 years old, Brazilian and married with two children. I work for the very poor by helping them to defend their basic rights.\u201d This is how Anisio Caixeta Junior, a young adherent of the Focolare Movement and public defender introduces himself \u2013 as one of those workers foreseen by Brazilian law to ensure that those who do not have the financial means will also able to have a public defence. One quickly realizes that aside from carrying out his task with professionalism, Anisio is also animated by high ideals: \u201cFrom when I was a child I\u2019ve always been an ardent adherent of Chiara Lubich\u2019s ideal of unity and I\u2019ve always tried to offer help to my neighbours freely, and I found it fulfilled me.\u201d Now I continue doing the same thing in my professional career. Chiara\u2019s ideal of unity helps me to remember before each hearing that there before me is not so much a bureaucratic proceeding, but a human person to be respected and loved. And it\u2019s not only a question of moral conviction: \u201cAnisio points out that in law history, in addition to the primary basic rights of life and property, there are also other rights, such as liberty and equality which emerged from the French Revolution. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights highlighted again another stronghold: the spirit of fraternity, which is therefore not merely help for the needy, but a stronghold which the very Constitution explicitly promotes and protects. Therefore, when I am driven to act by this ideal of fraternity, I am really applying a fundamental rule of my Constitution!\u00a0\u00a0 \u00bb Anisio has many experiences each day by \u201csimply applying the law\u201d. He especially enjoys sharing this one: \u00abOne day, standing by a traffic light with one of my colleagues, a boy came up to us asking for some money. But imagine his surprise when we responded: \u201cBut we can do much more than just give you a bit of change! If you don\u2019t have a family we can help you into a social programme just for that, even if you\u2019re living on the streets without money. These are basic rights that the State must provide since they\u2019re guaranteed by our Constitution. And it\u2019s my job to help people into these programmes!\u201d\u00bb Are public defenders heroes? Anisio is of a different opinion: \u201cI certainly don\u2019t think that I\u2019m changing the world with the work I do. But at the same time, I\u2019m very fascinated by the idea that even a glass of water is not given in vain and I\u2019m convinced that such a simple gesture as this can contribute to creating that new world, dedicated to fraternity, which can certainly be supported by the law, but must begin with ourselves!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An experience from a solicitor working for the common good. \u201cI try to see every hearing as more than just a bureaucratic proceeding; I try to see the human person who should be respected and loved.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291834\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}