OREGON
The Sunday Oregonian
Sunday, December 11, 2005
ASHBEL S. GREEN
Process servers have crashed celebrity parties, donned disguises and engaged in car chases -- whatever it takes to put legal papers into the hands of reluctant defendants.
But rough-and-tumble tactics won't work against the Vatican, an independent country located within the city of Rome. To sue a foreign nation, lawyers in an Oregon priest abuse case needed to spend $40,000 for a pair of Latin translators and wait more than three years to serve the proper Vatican official through the right diplomatic channels.
"I've never in 24 years of practice ever had the kind of obstruction, obfuscation, delays, difficulties, challenges and nonsense that I've encountered in trying to serve them," said Jeffrey R. Anderson, a Minneapolis attorney representing the plaintiff in the case.
But Anderson's persistence paid off. Thousands of lawsuits have been filed against Catholic dioceses and religious orders, but Anderson's suit is believed to be just one of two pending against the Vatican itself.
And Anderson's lawsuit, which involves a priest who molested a boy in Portland in the mid-1960s, is believed to be the first priest-abuse case to be successfully served against the Holy See in Rome.
Anderson, who has sued hundreds of dioceses and religious orders around the country, said he wants to hold the Vatican financially responsible.