(Reuters) – Pope Benedict, accused by victims’ lawyers of being ultimately responsible for an alleged cover-up of sexual abuse of children by priests, cannot be called to testify at any trial because he has immunity as a head of state, a top Vatican legal official said on Thursday.
The interview with Giuseppe dalla Torre, head of the Vatican’s tribunal, was published in Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper as Pope Benedict led Holy Thursday services in St Peter’s Basilica and Catholics marked the most solemn week of the liturgical calendar, culminating on Sunday in Easter Day.
In the morning the pope blessed oils for Church services during the year, and in the evening in the Rome basilica of St John’s in Lateran he washed the feet of 12 priests to commemorate Jesus’ gesture of humility the night before he died.
But on the day Catholics commemorate Christ’s founding of the priesthood, the pope did not refer in any of his sermons to the crisis of confidence sweeping the Church as almost daily revelations surface of sexual abuse of children in the past, accompanied by allegations of a cover-up.
Dalla Torre outlined the Vatican’s strategy to defend the pope from being forced to testify in several lawsuits concerning sexual abuse which are currently moving through the U.S. legal system.
“The pope is certainly a head of state, who has the same juridical status as all heads of state,” he said, arguing he therefore had immunity from foreign courts.
Lawyers representing victims of sexual abuse by priests in several cases in the United States have said they would want the pope to testify in an attempt to try to prove the Vatican was negligent.
But the pope is protected by diplomatic immunity because more than 170 countries, including the United States, have diplomatic relations with the Vatican. They recognize it as a sovereign state and the pope as its sovereign head.
Dalla Torre rejected suggestions that U.S. bishops, some of whom have been accused of moving molesters from parish to parish instead of turning them in to police, could be considered Vatican employees, making their “boss” ultimately responsible.
CHURCH NOT A MULTI-NATIONAL
“The Church is not a multi-national corporation,” dalla Torre said. “He has (spiritual) primacy over the Church … but every bishop is legally responsible for running a diocese.”
Dalla Torre also rejected suggestions by some U.S. lawyers and critics of the Church that Vatican documents in 1962 and 2001 encouraged local bishops not to report sexual abuse cases.
He re-stated the Vatican’s position that the documents, one of which called for procedures to remain secret, did not suggest to bishops that they should not report cases to authorities.
“Secrecy served above all to protect the victim and also the accused, who could turn out to be innocent, and it regarded only the canonical (church) trial and did not substitute the penal process,” he said.
“There is nothing that prohibited anyone (in the Church) from giving information to civil authorities.”
The Vatican has taken off the gloves in its response to media reports alleging the pope mishandled a series of abuse cases before he was elected.
It launched a frontal attack on the New York Times on Wednesday night by posting a long statement on its website (http:/www.vatican.va/resources/resources_card-levada2010_en.html)by Cardinal William J. Levada, who succeeded the pope as head of the Vatican’s doctrinal department.
Levada asked the newspaper “to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and should count on.”
The Vatican has denied any cover-up over the abuse of 200 deaf boys in the United States by Reverend Lawrence Murphy from 1950 to 1974. The New York Times reported the Vatican and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, were warned about Murphy but he was not defrocked.
The Times said its reports were “based on meticulous reporting and documents.”
Read original here: http://www.reuters.com/article/2010/04/01/us-pope-abuse-idUSTRE62U5RF20100401
*****BREAKING NEWS!!!! ONE COSA NOSTRA(MAFIA)SICILIAN CLAN TOP LEADER BREAKS THE CODE OF SILENCE( OMERTA)ON UNSETTLED SCORE, MAYBE THE REASON FOR THE POPE’ S RESIGNATION*****
PLEASE COPY/PASTE LINK BELOW TO YOUR BROWSER SEARCH SLOT DELETE FILTER DEFEATING CARRETS TO READ THE STORY ARTICLE.
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TONY GAMBINO WOKE UP FROM THE IZGC(ILLUMINATI ZIONIST GLOBALIST CABAL)MATRIX, AND CONFESSED KNOWLEDGE IN
THE ASSASSINATION CONTRACT MADE BY THE VATICAN THROUGH THE CIA IN A CONSPIRACY PLOT TO KILL PRESIDENT JOHN F, KENNEDY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Personally , there’s not a whole lot of difference between the Crusades and jihad !
The priesthood has been a hiding place for gays for centuries; nobody questioned why they didn’t have girlfriends!
The Pope is NOTHING, a false “god” that has lead the catholic “church” through the biggest terrorist period in the history of the planet (middle ages)
“The Vatican is a principal financial power because, in 1824, the House of Rothschild was appointed the sole fiscal agent of the entire Vatican empire. . . . And since 1824, the House of Rothschild has pretty much run the Vatican. . . . The Rothschilds control all their money.” – Eustace Mullins
“The Rothschilds & the Vatican”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNg6xwwc48Y
one will notice that the Rothschilds, whose key mandate is to continue working in secret (“secret” is the literal meaning of the word “occult”), keep their name off the “Most Wealthy People in the World” lists. that’s power.
He’s waist deep in a financial scandal , why else would he want immunity ? FOLLOW THE MONEY ………………………………………