Vatican can be sued for sex abuse

There shouldn't even be much debate about whether the Vatican can be sued for negligence in the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal. Anyone should be able to see that it can, because that's the law.

But Church bureaucrats at various levels have always tried to dodge responsibility for their roles in the scandal. They blame the victims, they use corporate law to defend themselves, they make their insurers pay their legal judgments, you name it. (One suspects a taxpayer-funded bailout is next.)

Lately, the Vatican's big defense is that it can't be sued by any American victim because the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act prohibits such suits. Their "reasoning" seems to be that because the seat of the Church is Vatican City, which is considered a sovereign country, the church is immune from being sued as foreign governments are.

A federal circuit court has now ruled in a Kentucky case that the Vatican is a foreign state that would usually be eligible for immunity - but the plaintiffs can still sue, because they allege a "tortious act."

The real story here may be that the Church bureaucracy continues to behave not like a religious organization but like a big corporation trying to protect itself. Unfortunately, the Church's policy since 1962 has been to cover up sexual abuse by priests - so sadly it's not a surprise that it tries hiding under the law instead of accepting responsibility.

I also think it's time we end the bullshit policy of allowing the Church to be considered a foreign state. The Vatican used this outrageous pretext to prevail in a case in which the Vatican bank was sued by concentration camp survivors.

With separation of church and state firmly entrenched in American constitutional law, it seems odd for any American court to consider a church to be a state.

(Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/11/25/sixth-circuit-vatican-can-be-sued-for-sexual-abuse)