FASTA University (Fraternity of Saint Thomas Aquinas Groups) is a private university with its headquarters in the city of Mar del Plata (in the province of Buenos Aires).
History
Children’s paramilitary organization
Sheets that included Catholic fundamentalism such as that of FASTA, whose main characteristics are the following: an anti-Semitism that, unlike the Nazi, does not propose the extermination of Jews but rather the search for their voluntary or forced conversion; the disciplining of internal dissidents; the restitution of political and economic power inside and outside the Church; and as FASTA itself declares, to integrate technical knowledge within the framework of a vision of the world illuminated by the Gospel in order to escape the pluralism that since the Renaissance considers that “all positions are equally valid”.
The authoritarian trait of the organization is beyond doubt. It was recorded by the newspaper “El Tiempo” of the province of San Juan with an article from last December 15 when it reported the start-up of the “FASTA Federico Ozanam” of that province, which began the 2016 school year with rooms of 4 and 5 years. That time the oldest members of the Fraternity recalled that since May 1963 the group has been working in San Juan at the initiative of Fosbery himself, who came to the province to start the lay movement that since then he has maintained with the Faith of the converts, the weekly activities attended each year by between 100 and 120 boys between the ages of 8 and 18, divided into groups.
Among the boys are “Los Escuderos” who are between 8 and 12 years old, while “Los Templarios” brings together those between 13 and 18. Among the youngest girls (8 to 10) are “Las Caperucitas”, “Las Herederas ” brings together those who own between 11 and 13 and the “Adalides” count in their ranks the adolescents between 14 and 18. Those over 18 fit into the “Milicianos” group. All of this is in accordance with the denunciations published in June 2006 by the Spanish newspaper El País with an article that denounced the indoctrination and psychological pressure exerted on the students of the schools that FASTA administers in Spain.
The article basically recounted the warlike euphoria of teaching enhanced by the military nature of those schools where pubescents are indoctrinated to be ready to fight before letting themselves be run over by secularist arrogance. According to that article, at that time FASTA was developing its activities in 22 dioceses in Argentina, Spain, Chile, Brazil and Peru.
To establish links with the former, it is worth remembering that the first school of the Fraternity in Argentina was established in Tucumán and at the height of state terrorism: 1978. There Fosbery directed the Universidad del Norte Santo Tomás de Aquino and the Boisdron school with the declared purpose of forming the Catholic leadership of society. Horacio Verbitsky revealed it in a long article published in Page 12 on October 1, 2006. There the journalist collected the testimony of the former national deputy, Rodolfo Vargas Aignasse, who maintained in a television program that Fosbery used to meet with Domingo Bussi in the Command of the Fifth Infantry Brigade to decide who should be kidnapped.
That Fosbery was not marginal in his relationship with the dictatorship is confirmed by another amazing fact: during the Malvinas war he traveled to Libya on behalf of General Leopoldo Galtieri to obtain missiles. “The mission, which was also integrated by the then Colonel José Dante Segundo Caridi, was detected by British intelligence,” Verbitsky assured, although in reality the fact had already been revealed by others. Such an inclination is not unknown to scholars of Catholic fundamentalism who point out that among them there is a fanatical eagerness to defend God and the Homeland, although as Fosbery himself declared when he celebrated Priebke in Bariloche, “there is no Homeland without the Church.”
This explains why a simple search on the web about the character shows him as an organizer of academic panels where we find characters such as Enrique Díaz Araujo, who organized tours of Cuyo for ex-Colonel Mohamed Seineldín, head of the carapintadas who rose up against the governments of Alfonsin and Menem; Vicente Massot, former editor of the far-right magazine “Cabildo” in the 1970s, current director of the newspaper La Nueva Provincia de Bahía Blanca and prosecuted for the disappearance of workers from his media company; or Héctor Hernández, at the time the official defender of the police officer Carlos Alberto Azzaro accused of the murder in 1976 of Omar Darío Amestoy, María del Carmen Fettolini, their four and two-year-old children, and Ana María del Carmen Granada in a simulated confrontation.
The same article by Verbitsky recalled how, during the first years of Kirchnerism, FASTA University and Fosbery became involved with the associations that considered military and police officers prosecuted for crimes against humanity “political prisoners.” These associations were chaired by Cecilia Pando (Association of Relatives and Friends of Political Prisoners in Argentina) and Karina Mujica (Complete Memory), the lady who was the girlfriend of the criminal Alfredo Astíz and walked through television programs emphasizing that the defenders of soldiers were very cute “because they were the daughters of gorillas”. These organizations also used to officiate masses for the detainees in the FASTA schools.
With respect to the first headquarters of the University of FASTA, it was authorized by the Menem Ministry of Education in 1991 and inaugurated in Mar del Plata in April 1992. The date coincides with the foundation of another university with similar characteristics: the Austral, belonging to the fanatical and elitist Opus Dei prelature that, being an alchemy of a religious congregation and a capitalist company, became the transmission belt between the Vatican and the right-wing governments of America during the 90s . [1]
Some members of the “U” cabinet specialized in that university -Simón Padrós, Mariano Ovejero and Pamela Calleti- and another important figure for the provincial government belongs to the prelature: pediatrician Abel Albino, who became a guru of the local administration in what The policy on children and the fight against malnutrition is referred to. Albino, let us remember, became famous for his fight against child malnutrition through his CONIN Foundation, although he also has a disproportionately dark side that he himself revealed with the publication of his book “Govern is to populate” and whose subtitle slaps common sense: “Responsible parenting or assisted fornication?
There Albino explains that since our country produces food for 400 million people, from the point of view of social medicine there is no hunger but rather a disease with cultural and ethical connotations: “the distortion of sexuality, a deformation that encourages the development, in an animal way, an unrestrained sexual freedom outside any frame”. Having made the diagnosis, Albino assures that the remedy consists of “eradicating Latin American cultural ills by imitating European virtues but not their vices.” As you might guess, the European virtues are republicanism while the vices are birth control policies. Criterion that leads him to conclude that child malnutrition is the result of a “pleiad of unwanted children, which, precisely,
Hence, it is not surprising that Albino claims as a structural part of the CONIN method a “correct sexual education” that contains “eleven guidelines of education” that in the main promote chastity and whose meaning is the following: any sexual act that does not serve to procreate or to consummate the marriage union is not only sinful, but also the cause of nature punishing sinners with the aberrant phenomenon of child malnutrition.
And so, one still has the devastating feeling that the governor of Salta is still accompanied by characters who, presenting themselves as tender old men, are more like Bernardo Gui, that cruel and despotic Dominican inquisitor from the movie “The Name of the Rose” and that in the name of God unleashes terrible cruelties against this crooked and sinful world.
Complicity with the Argentine civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983)
The FASTA association (Fraternity of Saint Thomas Aquinas Groups) was a confessional organization that collaborated with high-ranking leaders of the civic-military dictatorship (1976-1983). [two]
After the dictatorship, FASTA functioned as an idea tank for lawyers who resisted the advancement of trials for crimes against humanity.
The FASTA university was directed by Friar Fosbery, who vindicated the Nazi hierarch Eric Priebke in his study plan, collaborated with the bloodthirsty Tucuman dictator Domingo Bussi and with the dictator Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri (who took power in Argentina in 1982, and who ―in order to retain power at a time when the dictatorship was faltering― he devised his most rogue enterprise: the Malvinas War).
The FASTA fraternity spread “militia euphoria” among its members.
Creation of the university
The FASTA University (Fraternity of Saint Thomas Aquinas Groups), is constituted ―according to the definition of Pope Paul VI―, as a Catholic community of professors, students and collaborators committed to human religious formation in lay life.
On August 16, 1991, the National Ministry of Culture and Education authorized the creation of the FASTA University, approving the beginning of its academic activities as of 1992. On April 10 of that year, in a solemn academic act, it was carried out the official inauguration before more than 500 guests from the city of Mar del Plata and the province of Buenos Aires; of the national university educational subsystem of private initiative; of foreign Universities; of the different educational works of FASTA throughout the country; authorities, teachers and students.
The facilities of the new University, within the framework of the inaugural act, were “blessed” by the bishop of the diocese of Mar del Plata, José María Arancedo. Who, the year after the official commencement of activities of the University, through a note dated August 22, 1993, approves and authorizes FASTA University to be considered a “Catholic-inspired university.”
In 2008, FASTA opened a branch in Rosario (the city of Che).
Also among the advisers to the PRO in educational matters is a local director of the Fasta University (Fraternity of Santo Tomás de Aquino Groups) who landed in Rosario in 2008 to teach distance and face-to-face training and professional courses. The face-to-face courses were taught in agreement with a private religious institute in the city and were closed in 2013 by the provincial Ministry of Education for not being able to certify the required operation. The religious group that supports the Fasta University responds to the sectors that – together with Opus Dei – represent the most extreme right of the Roman Catholic Church.
Relationship with the genocides
The founder and rector of the Saint Thomas Aquinas scholastic fraternity was Fray Aníbal Fósbery. This Dominican priestsupported the association that considers military and police officers prosecuted for their participation in what the Federal Chamber of the Capital called in 1985 “a criminal plan” and the Oral Court of La Plata ten days ago “a genocide”. On Friday, October 5, 2006, this association ―presided over by Mrs. Cecilia Pando de Mercado―, and the organization Full Memory, for the Moral Restoration of the Homeland ―which was led by Miss Karina Mujica until her resignation for personal reasons (photographs were revealed of her working as a prostitute)―, carried out a public demonstration of support for the civic-military dictatorship in front of the Círculo Militar social club, for which the new harvest of threats against judges and journalists creates the climate. Masses have been celebrated in FASTA schools for the detainees.
University
The university’s headquarters are on the Atlantic Coast, in Mar del Plata province of Buenos Aires, it has a branch located in the city of San Carlos de Bariloche (in the province of Río Negro, a city in the Andes, since 2004 the Unit has been in operation Aulica Extension in the city of Tandil(province of Buenos Aires) and articulate careers under modality and distance courses, graduates have a solid professional training based on knowledge and skills necessary for their personal development, structured on the following bases: Humanistic and ethical training allows knowing the reality, to assume social responsibility as a professional. The successful employment of graduates demonstrates the ability to adapt to market demands. The international vocation facilitates the development of graduates abroad, through agreements with Universities around the world. Sports, artistic and recreational activities are proposed from different areas of the university, organizing internal competitions and participating in national and international interuniversity competitions. This is complemented by a set of activities aimed at Training for Commitment, promoting various solidarity actions in order to develop a vocation for service, through multiple projects that involve teachers, students and graduates.
