PORTLAND (OR)
The Associated Press
By NIGEL DUARA, Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Vatican won a major victory Monday in an Oregon federal courtroom, where a judge ruled that the Holy See is not the employer of molester priests.
The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Michael Mosman ends a six-year question in the decade-old case and could shield the Vatican from possible monetary damages.
The original lawsuit was filed in 2002 by a Seattle-area man who said the Rev. Andrew Ronan repeatedly molested him in the late 1960s.
The plaintiffs tried to show that Ronan and all priests are employees of the Vatican, which is therefore liable for their actions. …
After the ruling, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, director David Clohessy said in a statement that the Vatican wants “to have their cake and eat it too” by varying their definition of the church, sometimes calling it a top-down hierarchical institution and other times asserting that only locals have control over their employees.
“It’s a shame that, once again, top Catholic officials successfully exploit legal technicalities to keep clergy sex crimes and cover ups covered up,” Clohessy said. “The truth is that the Vatican oversees the church worldwide, insisting on secrecy in child sex cases and stopping or delaying the defrocking of pedophile priests.”
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