Reply #36: Vatican Asks Rice to Help With Lawsuit [View All]

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Friday, March 4, 2005; Page A22

A senior Vatican official asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to intervene in a sexual abuse lawsuit in Louisville that names the Vatican as a defendant, but she declined, a Roman Catholic newspaper reported yesterday.

The National Catholic Reporter, in a dispatch from Rome, said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the request during Rice's Feb. 8 visit to the Vatican. Quoting unnamed Vatican sources, the newspaper said Rice explained that under U.S. law, foreign states are required to assert claims of sovereign immunity themselves.

The suit pending in U.S. District Court in Louisville is one of many sexual abuse claims in recent years that have listed the Holy See among the defendants. Judges generally have dismissed such claims either on First Amendment grounds or because of the immunity that foreign governments enjoy from many kinds of lawsuits. But the Kentucky case is unusual because it is a class-action lawsuit and the Vatican is the sole defendant.

Sodano's decision to raise the matter with Rice "suggests concern in Rome that sooner or later its immunity may give way, exposing the Vatican to potentially crippling verdicts," the National Catholic Reporter said. The newspaper quoted Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls as saying, "It's obvious and reasonable that the Holy See would present its positions as a sovereign entity to the American State Department, and recall the immunity for its acts that international law anticipates."
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5164-2005Mar3.html