Aug. 17, 2005
VATICAN CITY -- Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked U.S. President
George W. Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit
that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys
by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.
The Vatican's embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State
Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope
immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion
submitted by the pope's lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern
Division of Texas in Houston.
Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now
Benedict XVI, he's accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of
Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s. The suit
is seeking unspecified monetary damages.
In Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Gerry Keener, said
Tuesday that the pope already is considered a head of state and
automatically has diplomatic immunity. Keener said Benedict doesn't have
to ask for immunity and Bush doesn't have to grant it.
International legal experts said Tuesday it would be "virtually
impossible" for the case to succeed because the pope, as a head of
state, had diplomatic immunity. "There's really no question at all, not
the vaguest legal doubt, that he's immune from the suit, period," said
Paolo Carozza, an international law specialist at the University of
Notre Dame Law School.
Nevertheless, lawyers for abuse victims say the case is significant
because previous recent attempts to implicate the Vatican, the pope or
other high-ranking church officials in U.S. sex abuse proceedings have
failed _ primarily because of immunity claims and the difficulty serving
top Vatican officials with U.S. lawsuits.
"It has gone further than any suit before, and it should be instructive
to the church that if evidence of their continued handling of these
matters keeps coming to light and is inconsistent with fair play, that
lawyers are going to pursue it," said Stephen Rubino, a New Jersey
lawyer who is not involved but has handled hundreds of other cases of
church sex abuse.
The three boys, identified in court documents as John Does I, II and
III, allege that a Colombian-born seminarian on assignment at St.
Francis de Sales church in Houston, Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, molested
them during counseling sessions in the church in the mid-1990s.
Patino-Arango has been indicted in a criminal case by a Harris County,
Texas grand jury and is a fugitive from justice, the lawsuit says.
Attorney Daniel Shea, who is representing one of the three boys in the
civil suit, said in a telephone interview Tuesday that then-Cardinal
Ratzinger, who headed the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the
Faith before becoming pope, was involved in a conspiracy to hide
Patino-Arango's crimes and to help him escape prosecution.
In the lawsuit, Shea cited a May 18, 2001 letter from Ratzinger, written
in Latin to bishops around the world, explaining that "grave" crimes
such as the sexual abuse of minors would be handled by his congregation.
The proceedings of special church tribunals handling the cases were
subject to "pontifical secret," Ratzinger's letter says.
"Ratzinger's involvement arises out of this letter, which demonstrates
the clear intent to conceal the crimes involved," Shea said.
The Vatican and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops have insisted
that the secret church procedures in the sex abuse case were not
designed to cover up abuse nor to prevent victims from reporting crimes
to law enforcement authorities. The document deals with church law -- not
keeping secrets from secular authorities, they say.
"To insinuate that this letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of
the Faith is part of a Vatican conspiracy is a total and complete
misunderstanding of the purpose of the letter," Archbishop Joseph
Fiorenza said in a statement. He heads the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese
and is also named as a defendant in the suit.
A Vatican spokesman and attorneys for the pope declined to comment.
Shea was in Rome on Tuesday for a demonstration, timed to coincide with
the church's World Youth Day in Cologne, Germany, to protest what
activists said was Vatican protection for "sexual predators" among the
clergy. Some 60 people formed a semicircle on the edge of St. Peter's
Square and held banners calling for Bush to refuse to grant Ratzinger
immunity.
Shea said Ratzinger learned as early as January that he had been named a
defendant in the lawsuit. He said Ratzinger had been served thanks to
Texas' "long-arm statute," in which Shea served the Texas secretary of
state the lawsuit, and the secretary of state then served Ratzinger at
the Vatican through certified mail.
As originally published
| All republished material is copyrighted by its original publisher.
It is reprinted by Unknown News without permission, solely for purposes of criticism, comment, and news reporting, in accordance with the Fair Use Guidelines of copyright material under § 107 of U.S.C. Title 17:
Notwithstanding the provisions of sections 106 and 106A, the fair use of a copyrighted work, including such use by reproduction in copies or phonorecords or by any other means specified by that section, for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching (including multiple copies for classroom use), scholarship, or research, is not an infringement of copyright. In determining whether the use made of a work in any particular case is a fair use the factors to be considered shall include --
(1) the purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes;
(2) the nature of the copyrighted work;
(3) the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole; and
(4) the effect of the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work.
The fact that a work is unpublished shall not itself bar a finding of fair use if such finding is made upon consideration of all the above factors. |
|
|
There's much more than this at Unknown News.
|
|
Commentary:
The Catholic Church's hierarchy wants "diplomatic immunity, for decades of cover-up, decades of quietly transferring child-raping priests from one church (depleted of victims) to the next (where fresh victims awaited).
The Catholic Church did this with complete malice and forethought, and there's almost no doubt they're going to get away with it.
This is another reason it's a dumb idea to consider the Vatican a nation-state, with ambassadors and all the other trappings of government.
=H&HH=
|
|
|
