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	Lawyers in Case against Vatican Say Documents Show Church's Control By Annysa Johnson Milwaukee Journal Sentinel August 22, 2011 http://www.jsonline.com/features/religion/128194498.html Lawyers for a plaintiff in one of two sex abuse lawsuits pending against the Vatican in U.S. federal courts released documents Monday that they say show Vatican control over offending priests and a clerical culture driven by secrecy and an avoidance of scandal. St. Paul, Minn., attorney Jeffrey Anderson, who also represents victims in civil cases and the other Vatican lawsuit, all in Milwaukee, called the disclosure in the Oregon case unprecedented, saying it is the first time the Vatican has been forced to produce documents related to a sex abuse case. "They show what we have said for decades, that the Vatican?.?.?.?is in control of all matters related to the employment, control, retention and removal of offending priests," Anderson said in a news conference at his law firm's offices. Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's U.S.-based attorney, issued a statement Monday blasting the news conference as "yet another unfortunate attempt to mislead the public." Lena said the documents implicate the late Father Andrew Ronan's religious order, the Servants of Mary, or Servite Fathers, rather than the Vatican. "None of it focused on what the Holy See knew and when," he said. The documents at issue are among 1,800 pages released by the Vatican last week on court order in the Oregon case. The 9-year-old lawsuit, filed by a man identified as John V. Doe, alleges that the Vatican was Ronan's employer and as such is liable for his abuse in 1965. Ronan, who died in 1992, is accused of molesting minors in Ireland, Chicago and Oregon. The documents include letters between Servite Fathers officials in Rome and the United States, and Vatican protocols, written in Latin, for the handling of clergy sex abuse cases. They show that the Servite Fathers knew of Ronan's sexual abuse of minors beginning in the 1950s but continued to transfer him to U.S. posts where he had access to children, and that they looked to the Pope to laicize him. One letter written in 1966, after Ronan had abused minors in Chicago and Oregon, states: "There are only a few men within the Order and Province who know of his problem, and we believe it will be possible, if the Holy Father will grant Fr. Ronan's request (to be laicized), for him to leave quietly and without any open scandal." Another, in 1963, suggests the order felt it was better to ship Ronan to a parish in the U.S. rather than leave him at a seminary for young men in Ireland: "I am sure you will agree that to put him back in a seminary would be contrary to all prescripts of the Church and to common sense. While there has been no known recurrence of this problem, all the experts in this perversion agree that there is no permanent cure. I am expecting the worst any day here at St. Philip's but much better that it occur here than in a seminary." According to Lena, the Holy See was not involved in Ronan's transfers, had no knowledge of his sexual history before 1966 and moved quickly to defrock him once it learned of it. Anderson countered that he is not required to prove prior knowledge.
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