Norberto Padilla

G20 Interfaith Forum Organizing Committee; President, Latin American Consortium for Religious Liberty | Argentina

Norberto Padilla is an attorney who graduated from the University of Buenos Aires in 1970.  He was an advisor to Dr. Fernando de la Rúa, Chairman of the Commission for Constitutional Affairs in the Argentina Senate, between 1983 and 1989. He was at the Foreign Affairs Ministry an advisor and Assistant-Secretary for Religious Affairs (Worship) since 1989 until 1998, and between December 1999 to the same month of 2001 Secretary for Religious Affairs (Worship) with the rank of ambassador. Padilla began his career as a Professor of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law and Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires in 1972. He was Assistant Professor of Constitutional Law, now retired. Since 1974 he is a professor of Constitutional Law at the Faculty of Law, the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, where he reached the position of a full regular professor. He has been a member of the Board of the Faculty and of the High Council of the University.  He is a full member of the Argentine Association of Constitutional Law, of the Editorial Board of the review of culture Criterio, former President and life Board Member of Fundación Navarro Viola, recently appointed full member of the National Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, honorary advisor of the Argentine Council for International Relations (CARI), and a life member of the Argentine Institute of Genealogical Sciences. He is a founding member and member of the Board of the Argentine Council for Religious Freedom (CALIR), and founding member and currently President of the Board of the Latin American Consortium for Religious Freedom. Since 1972, he has been a co-worker for the Argentine Bishops Conference Commission for Ecumenism and Interreligious Dialogue, and has been appointed on three occasions by the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of Christian Unity to ecumenical and Catholic-Jewish conferences.