VATICAN CITY
Los Angeles Times
By NICOLE WINFIELD, Associated Press Writer
VATICAN CITY -- Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.
The Vatican's embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion submitted by the pope's lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas in Houston.
Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now Benedict XVI, he's accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s. The suit is seeking unspecified monetary damages.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Gerry Keener, said Tuesday that the pope already is considered a head of state and automatically has diplomatic immunity. Keener said Benedict doesn't have to ask for immunity and Bush doesn't have to grant it.
International legal experts said Tuesday it would be "virtually impossible" for the case to succeed because the pope, as a head of state, had diplomatic immunity. "There's really no question at all, not the vaguest legal doubt, that he's immune from the suit, period," said Paolo Carozza, an international law specialist at the University of Notre Dame Law School.
Nevertheless, lawyers for abuse victims say the case is significant because previous recent attempts to implicate the Vatican, the pope or other high-ranking church officials in U.S. sex abuse proceedings have failed -- primarily because of immunity claims and the difficulty serving top Vatican officials with U.S. lawsuits.
"It has gone further than any suit before, and it should be instructive to the church that if evidence of their continued handling of these matters keeps coming to light and is inconsistent with fair play, that lawyers are going to pursue it," said Stephen Rubino, a New Jersey lawyer who is not involved but has handled hundreds of other cases of church sex abuse.