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	Vatican Appeals Ruling in Molestation Case By William McCall The Associated Press, carried in The Baytown Sun June 9, 2006 http://www.baytownsun.com/wire.lasso?report=/dynamic/stories/V/VATICAN_LAWSUIT? SITE=TXGAL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=blank.html&CTIME=2006-06-09-00-26-19 Portland, Ore. (AP) -- The Vatican filed an appeal Thursday to a federal judge's ruling refusing to dismiss a lawsuit that claims the Holy See bears responsibility for a priest who was transferred from city to city even though he was known to be a molester. Jeffrey Lena, a Berkeley, Calif., attorney representing the Vatican, said a district court had agreed to send to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals his appeal of a ruling Wednesday that the Vatican may be subject to the lawsuit despite the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act. The act presumes states, including the Vatican, are immune from being sued, but there may be exceptions. Jeffrey Anderson, the attorney representing the Seattle-area man who filed the lawsuit, has praised Wednesday's ruling as the first of its kind in the nation. He said Thursday he had been expecting the Vatican's appeal. The 2002 lawsuit claims the Vatican, the Archdiocese of Portland and the archbishop of Chicago conspired to protect the Rev. Andrew Ronan despite a history of sex abuse allegations, moving him from Ireland to Chicago to Portland. The plaintiff claims Ronan abused him when he was a teenager and Ronan was at St. Albert's Church in Portland. Ronan died in 1992, according to Bud Bunce, spokesman for the Archdiocese of Portland.
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