The woes of the Catholic Church in the wake of the sex abuse scandal continues with reports of a lawsuit filed in a Milwaukee court against Pope Benedict and two Church officials by a US man who says he was abused by a priest. The significant part here is that the lawsuits, as reported here, alleges that the Vatican is a global business empire, practicing in "commercial activity" in Wisconsin and across the U.S. and holding "unqualified power" over each diocese, parish and follower.
Proving this claim is going to be tough and I suspect impossible. To begin with, the plaintiff would have to make the case that there is an employment relationship between individual priests and the Holy See, that the priests are actually employees of the Vatican. That's not true.
Still, there is a body of thought that begs to differ. The world's most famous atheist Richard Dawkins argues that the Pope should stand trial, a position championed by prominent lawyers like Geoffrey Robertson.
But British barrister Carl Gardener argues in the Head of Legal blog that's not going to happen because there is no case for the Pope to answer to. "The Rome Statute, signed in 1998, only came into force in 2002 – and article 24 makes it clear that there can be no criminal liability for conduct committed before then … in the absence of a request from the ICC to arrest the Pope, what other possibilities are there? First, and most obviously, another state could request his extradition for offences under its jurisdiction, in which case the police here might be able to arrest him and put him before a magistrate. If a state did make a request, he might have need to worry. But no state has requested his extradition, and there is no European Arrest Warrant against him. So that won't work."
So the case is likely to fail. Let's hope however that it forces the Church to become more transparent and more accountable in looking after the moral and religious guidance of more than a billion people. That's regardless of whether you consider the Church to be a business or not.
no comment untill now