ROME
LifeSite
ROME, August 19, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A US lawyer, Daniel Shea, is leading an effort to have the US State Department diplomatically de-recognize the Holy See using a sex-abuse lawsuit. The suit names then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, at the time head of the Catholic Church's doctrinal office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, accusing him of involvement in a conspiracy to cover up the sexual assault against three boys by a seminarian in Texas in the mid-1990's.
Shea, himself a former seminarian educated in law at Catholic University of America, has demanded that the US waive the Pope's diplomatic immunity as head of state in the suit, a move that has been characterized as absurd by international legal experts.
He told reporters in Rome that, should the Bush administration decide to "grant" the Pope immunity, he would launch a constitutional challenge to have the US de-recognize the Holy See as a sovereign state. Shea's anti-Catholic biases were revealed at the press conference at which he made this announcement which was held under the aegis of the Italian Radical Party, a branch of one of Europe's most openly anti-Catholic organizations.