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	Vatican Distances Itself from U.S. Abuse Cases Church Claims Bishops Not Employees By Nick Squires Windsor Star May 18, 2010 http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Vatican+distances+itself+from+abuse+cases/3040911/story.html The Vatican has insisted it is not responsible for sex abuse cases in the United States because bishops are not technically employees. It made the claim in response to court cases relating to incidents in which Catholic bishops knew about pedophile priests but failed to inform the authorities. But Vatican lawyers have said they will argue that bishops are not paid by Rome and therefore not technically its responsibility. Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S. lawyer, said bishops were not controlled on a day-to-day basis by the Holy See, nor did they act on Rome's behalf. He said that their relationship with the Vatican was "religious" rather than "civil" so they were not liable under normal employment laws. The result of the court case will have ramifications for similar cases that are before the U.S. courts. The church is also anxious to block the demands of victims' lawyers that Pope Benedict XVI himself should be called to appear in court. The Vatican has dismissed the attempts as "completely without merit" because as the head of a sovereign state the pontiff enjoys immunity from prosecution. Meanwhile, the Irish Catholic Church's child protection watchdog said Monday it had received 197 new complaints of abuse in the year to March 31. None of the new complaints were made by children or young people and some dated back to events in the 1950s and 1960s, the National Board for the Safeguarding of Children in the Catholic Church said. The board said that while much of the media coverage surrounding abuse by clergy had concentrated on sexual abuse, many of the allegations "were cases of alleged physical and emotional abuse as well as allegations of sexual abuse." Still, Cardinal Sean Brady, under intense pressure to quit amid the pedophile priest controversy gripping the church in Europe and the U.S., expressed his commitment to working toward a "genuine healing and renewal in the church." He has faced calls to quit after it emerged that as a 35-year-old priest in 1975 he met two children abused by a notorious pedophile clergyman, Rev. Brendan Smyth. The children were required by Brady to sign an oath of silence about their abuse and to talk to no one about their interviews except authorized clergy. Police were not informed and Smyth went on to abuse children in Ireland, Scotland and the U.S. before he was convicted 20 years later and jailed for a litany of sexual offences.
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