Читать книгу Can We Save the Catholic Church? - Hans Kung - Страница 16

The Supreme Court in the USA rejected an appeal by which the Vatican attempted to challenge the verdict of a court in the state of Oregon. The Oregon court had declared that the Vatican itself could be put on trial for the sexual abuse carried out by Catholic priests and that, on conviction, it could be forced to pay punitive damages. The US Supreme Court also rejected the Vatican’s argument invoking its legal immunity as a sovereign state. Attorney Jeff Anderson (St Paul, Minnesota), who has been extremely successful in bringing class action suits against individual clerical perpetrators of sexual abuse and whose own daughter had herself been abused by an ex-priest, declared that this verdict meant that, after eight years of obstruction since 2002, the path was finally clear for a class action suit in which the Vatican could be held criminally accountable for its role in concealing cases of abuse. It is expected that such a suit will soon be filed against Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the former Cardinal Secretary of State and current Dean of the College of Cardinals, and against the current Cardinal Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone. Moreover, a suit could also be filed directly against Ratzinger himself, for he was the man who, according to a detailed report by the New York Times, while he was prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, abstained from issuing any sanctions against the priest Lawrence Murphy. Lawrence Murphy abused some 200 deaf boys in Milwaukee between 1950 and 1975. Even if the pope as head of state enjoys immunity from prosecution, these are disastrous prospects.