Constitutional Court of Colombia eliminates invocation to God from the oath of veterinary doctors

The Constitutional Court of Colombia eliminated the invocation to God of the oath of veterinary and zootechnical doctors, in a sentence that has been criticized by Catholic parliamentarians being an “attempt to silence the faith of millions of Colombians.”

On August 26, the Court reported in a statement on Judgment C-332/25, in which it declares “inexequible the expression ‘in the name of God’, contained in article 9 of Law 576 of 2000”, which issued the code of ethics of veterinary and zootechnical doctors.

The ruling has been criticized by several legislators, including Senator Mauricio Giraldo and representative Luis Miguel López, who on their social networks pointed out that it is “one more step in the strategy of banishing the faith of all public spaces.”

The rejection of the Court’s ruling was expressed by several representatives through a video posted on social networks.

In this, Senator Giraldo denounces that the objective is to “silence the faith of millions of Colombians”, and recalled that the State “is secular, not atheist or secular.”

“Eliminating expressions such as ‘In the name of God’ in our oaths is not neutrality, it is a direct attack on our cultural and spiritual identity,” López Aristizábal adds.

Another of those who are pronounced is the deputy of the Departmental Assembly of Antioquia, Walter Arias Tobón, who remembers that the Christian faith forged the laws, morality and coexistence in Colombia, so “pretending to erase it from the institutions is to weaken the social fabric that unites us as a nation”.

The Court justifies its ruling arguing that the oath is “a figure that has suffered a transformation”, going from “being a religious evocation until it becomes the expression of a solemn commitment, without a necessary relationship with the religious thought of who expresses it.”

For the Court, this invocation “interferes with the rights to freedom of conscience and cults, to the obligation of religious neutrality of the State and discriminates those professionals who are not believers, who are agnostic or who follow religions and cultures where invocation to God is not used.”

Invoking God does not contradict the Constitution

The statement reports that the president of the Constitutional Court, Judge Jorge Enrique Ibáñez Najar, did not agree to eliminate the invocation of God, because it is “compatible with the 1991 Constitution.”

For the magistrate, “his suppression was due to a reductionist interpretation and exclusive of the principle of secularism.”

“In his opinion,” says the statement, “the 1991 letter enshrines an inclusive and pluralistic secularity model, which does not translate into hostility towards the religious, but in respect and neutrality in the face of all beliefs or its absence. The majority decision, by completely outlawing the invocation, ends up ignoring this constitutional design and disconnecting the notion of secularity of its pluralistic foundation.”

In that sense, remember that the preamble of the Constitution and the presidential oath contain “express references to God”, and that these formulas “were interpreted by the Court itself-since Judgment C-350 of 1994-as cultural and ethical expressions that coexist with state religious neutrality.”

Likewise, the magistrate points out that religious and conscientious freedom “includes not only the right to refrain from religious manifestations, but also the right to make them freely”, so that preventing invocation to God in an oath “constitutes an illegitimate restriction.”

There is a different treatment from animals and not born

In the same sentence, the Court ruled in favor of the modification of article 12 of Law 576 of 2000, to establish that “animals are syndor, recipients of a legal regime of protection and a prohibition of unjustified abuse, and not mere instruments for any purpose of human beings.”

Judge Ibáñez Najar supported this constitutional recognition, but warns that there is a contradiction “in jurisprudential evolution on this matter”, because while the Court has expanded “the protection of animals as sensory beings”, has restricted the protection of babies in gestation.

“The safeguard of Nasciturus – the human being to be born – which is a symptom and alive being, has been increasingly restricted by decisions of the constitutional jurisprudence itself,” he says.

In Colombia there is no abortion law, however, this practice was decriminalized by the Constitutional Court In 2006 under three grounds.

In 2022, the Court liberalized abortion Until 24 weeks gestationbut said that “this temporal limit will not be applicable to the three cases in which Judgment C-355 of 2006”.

In the August 26 statement, Judge Ibáñez Najar “recalls that Nasciturus constitutes the most obvious demonstration of a symptoms in a state of defenselessness and in the process of gestation, whose dignity and intrinsic value should be subject to a prevalent and reinforced protection by the legal system”.

In that sense, he expresses that “human life, in any of its stages, cannot receive a degree of guardianship lower than that granted to animal life, since this would be contrary to the foundations of constitutionalism, focused on human dignity as axial principle.”