Brazilian Judge Sérgio Moro receives Notre Dame Award

University of Notre Dame President Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., presented the Notre Dame Award to Brazilian Judge Sérgio Moro at a ceremony Oct. 2 (Monday) in São Paulo for his courageous efforts to preserve the “nation’s integrity through his steadfast, unbiased application of the law.”

“Previous Note Dame Award recipients, each in their own way, have been pillars of conscience and integrity, and whose actions benefited their compatriots, and by example, the whole world, as they committed themselves to faith, justice, peace, truth and solidarity with the most vulnerable,” Father Jenkins said.

“In Dr. Moro’s case, the University recognizes that he is engaged in nothing less than the preservation of his nation’s integrity though his steadfast, unbiased application of the law. By addressing the pernicious problems of public corruption in a judicious but diligent way, Dr. Moro has made a marked difference for all Brazilians and for humankind at large in our universal thirst for justice.”

Moro is a federal judge in the southern city of Curitiba who gained international recognition and commendation in recent years for his sentencing of powerful Brazilian politicians and business leaders on corruption charges. Most recently, as part of a four-year investigation of the state-controlled oil company Petrobras, he sentenced former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to nearly 10 years in prison. 

Modeling his approach on Italy’s “Clean Hands” corruption investigation of the 1990s, Moro also has played an integral role in the “Banestado” case that led to the prosecution of 97 people on corruption charges, and Operation Farol da Colina, in which the judge called for the preventive arrest of 103 suspects for committing money laundering, tax evasion and other crimes.

The New York Times has labeled Moro “the face of the national reckoning for Brazil’s ruling class.” Fortune magazine ranked him 13^th on its list of World’s Greatest Leaders, and Time magazine included him on its list of the world’s 100 most influential people.

Moro, 45, was raised in Maringá, a city in the southern state of Paraná. He earned a bachelor’s of law degree from Maringá State University and a doctorate from the Federal University of Paraná. He studied abroad through an exchange program at Harvard Law School in 1998.

Appointed to his current position in 1996, he participated in 2007 in the U.S. State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program, visiting U.S. agencies and institutions responsible for preventing and combating money laundering.

Last presented in 2000, the University has relaunched the Notre Dame Award as part of its 175^th anniversary celebration. It was first awarded in 1992 in conjunction with Notre Dame’s sesquicentennial and has been given to “women and men whose life and deeds have shown exemplary dedication to the ideals for which the University stands: faith, inquiry, education, justice, public service, peace and care for the most vulnerable.”

Previous recipients of the award include former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, Mother Teresa, Nobel Peace Prize winner John Hume of Northern Ireland, Canadian humanitarian Jean Vanier and U.S. civil rights leader Leon Sullivan.