Legal defence of the Pope in the US
Vatican offers 3 reasons it's not liable for abuse| ajc.com
VATICAN CITY — Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defense that the church hopes will shield the pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him deposed.
The case was filed in 2004 in Kentucky by three men who claim they were abused by priests and claim negligence by the Vatican. Their attorney, William McMurry, is seeking class-action status for the case, saying there are thousands of victims across the country.Court documents obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the pope has immunity as head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests weren't employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.
The Holy See is trying to fend off the first U.S. case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for allegedly failing to alert police or the public about Roman Catholic priests who molested children.
Pope Pius VII, the last Pope to be placed under actual duress by the secular authorities. Pope Pius IX was a self-imposed prisoner in the Vatican after the fall of the Papal States.
"This case is the only case that has been ever been filed against the Vatican which has as its sole objective to hold the Vatican accountable for all the priest sex abuse ever committed in this country," he said in a phone interview. "There is no other defendant. There's no bishop, no priest."
The Vatican is seeking to dismiss the suit before Benedict XVI can be questioned or secret documents subpoenaed.
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Comments
Only in America could such a media beat up get any attention.
I believe enterprising attorneys could and should widen the scope to include previous transgressions, particularly those that lead to the commitment of heinous crimes during the Holocaust. In my book “Six Million Crucifixions” I make a legal analysis of the various counts a potential indictment against the Church, the Vatican and members of the clergy might have looked like, had the Allies set up an international trial styled after Nuremberg and put any clergy guilty of crimes on the dock. In particular, an indictment might have included the following charges:
* Defamation
* Incitement
* Complicity in human rights violations
* Accessory or complicity in crimes against humanity
* Failure to warn/act
* Obstruction of Justice
* Profiting from stolen property
* Abuse of diplomatic privileges
* Crimes against humanity
I think it’s time to revisit the role of the Church in the Holocaust and its aftermath, and do it quickly as Pope Benedict is attempting to whitewash history by canonizing Pope Pius XII, while the Vatican Secret Archives covering the Nazi era remain closed and will continue to remain closed for another five years.
Gabriel Wilensky
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Six Million Crucifixions:
How Christian Teachings About Jews Paved the Road to the Holocaust
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