GUAM
Guam Daily Post
Gaynor D. Daleno, Neil Pang | Post News Staff
Taking on the Vatican won’t be easy, but attorney David J. Lujan intends to do exactly that, as he plans to move more cases – alleging pedophile priests victimized altar boys – from the local court to the federal court in Guam.
“We believe that with the naming of the Vatican, that also shows that, really, the archdiocese of Guam is … controlled by the Vatican, which is a foreign state,” Lujan said Tuesday.
Lujan’s law firm last week filed six sex-abuse cases on behalf of former Guam Catholic altar boys in the District Court of Guam. The six cases named retired priest Louis Brouillard as the alleged predator.
As soon as today, Lujan’s law firm is expected to file more cases in federal court, and this time, these cases will be about Archbishop Anthony Apuron’s alleged abuses of altar boys, from when Apuron was still a priest.
The first six cases filed against the Archdiocese of Agana in the federal court argue that the archdiocese is under the control of the Holy See, which is the central government for Catholic churches, and thus constitutes a citizen of a foreign country for purposes of diversity jurisdiction.
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