Vatican Makes Legal Case Why It's Not Liable for Abuse

RedTracker| Vatican lawyers are preparing their arguments in a US sex abuse case in Kentucky about why they are above the law and bear no responsibility in Kentucky or in Oregon, where a similar case is proceeding. It’s clear that for the first time in history, the US Supreme Court may eventually rule on whether or not the Vatican (and other churches) are protected as ‘above the law’.

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 Vatican has been a city-state with international immunity from prosecution since 1929.

It’s clear that if the Vatican was a multinational corporation, it would have liability for employees working in different countries. If the Vatican was a government, citizens could vote out priests and bishops, ‘serving the people’ in each country.

What we have with the Vatican is an enormously powerful global institution whose bishops are dictating the terms of American health care — and they have no governance except God. This is a very thorny legal subject, one most certainly destined for the US Supreme Court in the coming years, unless the cases are dismissed. Anne via Huffington Post