How Vatican Tries to Dodge Legal Fallout of Sex Abuse

[DainBramaged]

Developments in a Kentucky court case suggest that the Vatican will seek to shield Pope Benedict XVI and the church from liability in the worldwide clerical sex abuse crisis by distancing itself from individual dioceses.

In legal documents filed in U.S. District Court in Louisville last week, the Vatican claims that as the head of a sovereign state, the Vatican City, the pope is immune from prosecution. The papers further assert that American bishops are not employed by the Holy See.

The Vatican will also likely deny that a 1962 church decree about clergy and the reporting of clerical pedophilia is a "smoking gun" that led to a worldwide cover-up of sexual crimes.

The slow-moving case was filed in Kentucky in 2004 on behalf of three men who said they were sexually abused by priests. It is being closely watched this week because it's the first such case in which the Vatican itself has been named as the sole defendant.

Louisville attorney William McMurry wants to question Benedict under oath to find out what the Vatican knew about the Rev. Louis Miller, who is serving a 13-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2003 to sexually abusing one of the Kentucky defendants and other children. Miller was removed from the priesthood in 2004 by the late Pope John Paul II.

"The world has finally woken up to all this abuse," said McMurry, who in 2003 secured a $25.3 million settlement between the Archdiocese of Louisville and 243 sex abuse victims.

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/how-vatican-tries-to-dodge-legal-fallout-of-sex-abuse/19421014

[defendandprotect]

1. They've been successfully covering up sexual abuse for thousands of years . . .

according to the Italians!

[LiberalFighter]

2. Are they kidding? American bishops are not employed by the Holy See?

Then does that mean the American Catholics can now appoint their own bishops and cardinals without approval of the pope?

[Webster Green]

3. Whaty a creepy picture!

A really slimy old fuckhead holding his icon to torture and death.

It gives me the willies. :scared: