Vatican's Right to Sovreign Immunity Being Tested

First and foremost, the Vatican is the headquarters of an international religious organization, not a sovereign nation in the typical sense even though it controls a postage stamp size piece of real estate within Italy. Yet this fiction that the Vatican is a sovereign nation has allowed it to dodge responsibility and liability for the many sins of its subordinate national churches and dioceses. But for this, victims of predator priests would be able to perhaps win big jury awards against the Vatican which has knowingly maintained a policy of secrecy and cover ups to protect priests and other religious personnel who have sexually abused children and youths. It is truly a case of using legal technicalities to avoid much needed accountability and legal liability. A story in the Irish Times looks at this situation as more calls are coming in Ireland for both criminal and civil actions against the Catholic Church in the wake of the Murphy Report that looked at the long pattern of sexual abuse and cover up in the diocese of Dublin. In another development, The Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin - who seems to be one of the few high clerics in the Church world wide that has any moral integrity - threatens to ask the Vatican to fire four offending bishops if they do not resign. First, some highlights from the Irish Times story:
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WHEN US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice visited the Vatican in February 2005, she was caught off guard by Cardinal Angelo Sodano. After discussions on Iraq, the Middle East and religious liberty, Sodano asked her if she could do something about an irksome court case in Kentucky. As reported by John Allen, veteran Vatican correspondent for the US National Catholic Reporter ( NCR ), Sodano explained that the case, a class action to make the Vatican accountable for child sexual abuse by priests in the US, was a violation of the internationally recognised principle of “sovereign immunity”.
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The Vatican, as a recognised state, cannot be subject to the jurisdiction of other states, an extension of the old British maxim rex non potest peccare , the king can do no wrong. . . . Rice replied that it was for the Vatican to assert immunity in the Kentucky court itself, and it has pleaded immunity successfully in, by Allen’s reckoning, some two dozen US cases.
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Among those cases where the Vatican successfully pleaded immunity is the long-running Alperin vs Vatican Bank , a case originally filed in San Francisco in 1999. The plaintiffs are Serb, Jewish, Roma and Ukrainian concentration camp survivors and their relatives and organisations representing over 300,000 Holocaust victims and their heirs. Their claim is for the return of some $50 million of the treasury of the Ustashe, the genocidal, Nazi-collaborating government of Croatia that, according to the US state department and others, was illicitly transferred to the Vatican, the Franciscan Order, and other banks after the end of the war.
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In 2007 the Vatican got itself off the hook, leaving the Franciscans alone to fight the case, a ruling that puts the deeply anomalous position of the Vatican in sharp relief – while it may not be sued, an international Catholic order, and indeed any other international religious body, may.
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In order not to jeopardise that valuable position, Vatican sources admitted to the NCR , the Holy See remained reluctant to enter into the details of sex abuse policy in the US. Indeed, Colm O’Gorman argues most plausibly that the failure of the Vatican to promulgate a mandatory worldwide code of conduct, with a reporting requirement – particularly important in the developing world – stems precisely from a fear of acknowledging its authority over national churches and implicitly conceding that priests and bishops, whom it appoints, are actually its agents in a legal sense.
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In the wake of the Murphy report, it is arguable that while Ireland should maintain a strong relationship at diplomatic level with an organisation representing one billion faithful, it is worth considering whether that should necessarily be conducted on a state-to-state basis. With all that that entails.

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It would be most ironic (and well deserved) if the first place the Vatican was to lose its status as a sovereign state was Ireland, a one time Catholic bastion. As for holding members of the Church hieracrhy accountable, Archbishopm Martin continues to be a loud, lone voice in the wilderness in terms of realizing the same old lame apologies will no longer suffice. Here are highlights from the Irish Independent:

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THE Archbishop of Dublin, Dr Diarmuid Martin will seek to have four bishops fired by the Vatican if they refuse to step down over the Murphy report into child sex abuse cases in Dublin. The dramatic development emerged as one of the embattled bishops, Martin Drennan of Galway, accused Dublin's Archbishop Martin of calling his integrity into question.
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The three other bishops facing calls to go are Dublin auxiliaries, Eamonn Walsh and Raymond Field, and the Bishop of Kildare and Leighlin, Jim Moriarty, a previous auxiliary in Dublin. The prospect of their resignations moved a step closer yesterday after school principals demanded all four should step down as patrons of hundreds of primary schools.
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The Irish Primary Principals' Network (IPPN) also wants the four bishops to be accountable for their actions -- or inactions -- in discharging their child protection responsibilities. Taoiseach Brian Cowen also waded into the row, firmly backing Archbishop Martin's stance and saying it was "a time for leadership and accountability" from the Catholic Church. Mr Cowen said: "The resignation of Bishop Murray is a welcome indication that those who are in positions of leadership and responsibility in the Church are facing up to their responsibility in the light of the very clear findings of the Murphy Commission."
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Last night a senior Dublin priest openly sided with Archbishop Martin and said that more resignations of bishops named in the Murphy report were "inevitable." Fr Joe Mullen, chairman of the Dublin Council of Priests, said: "If they don't resign or if this moment that we're in doesn't move in a way that seems to be fuelled by forgiveness and justice and a sense of recognition of hurt and hope for healing, then maybe we'll all be retiring, if not resigning".