Kentucky men give up case against Vatican

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Three men who sought to hold the Vatican liable in an American court for sexual abuses by Roman Catholic priests in a Kentucky diocese are abandoning the case.

Lawyers looked to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath but had to leap the high legal hurdle of the Vatican’s sovereign immunity status in the U.S. But plaintiffs filed a motion on Monday asking a federal judge in Louisville to dismiss their claims.

Their attorney, William McMurry, said he was seeking to end the case because of an earlier ruling that recognized Vatican immunity and failure to turn up new plaintiffs for the lawsuit who haven’t yet been involved in a Catholic clergy abuse case.

“Virtually every child who was abused and will come forward as an adult has come forward and sued a bishop and collected money, and once that happens, it’s over,” McMurry said. McMurry represented more than 240 abuse victims who settled with the Louisville Catholic Archdiocese for $25 million in 2003.

The lawsuit was considered the first in the U.S. to make it to the stage of determining whether victims had a negligence claim against the Vatican, which argued the plaintiffs never showed a connection between Rome and the American clergy abuse scandal.

Filed in 2004 by three men abused in the Louisville diocese, it argues in part that U.S. bishops should be considered employees or officials of the Holy See.

The case was being closely watched as the clerical abuse scandal swirls around the Holy See. Lawsuits naming top Vatican officials were also filed recently in Wisconsin and Oregon. Both are making their way through federal courts and it wasn’t immediately clear if dropping the Louisville lawsuit would affect them.

An attorney for the Vatican, which is referred to in the lawsuit as the Holy See, said the Kentucky lawsuit lacked merit.

“This development confirms that, contrary to what the plaintiffs’ lawyers repeatedly told the media, there has never been a Holy See policy requiring concealment of child sexual abuse,” attorney Jeffrey Lena said in a statement. “The theory crafted by the plaintiffs’ lawyers six years ago misled the American public.”

In June, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from the Holy See in an Oregon lawsuit that was filed in 2002 by a Seattle-area man who said a priest molested him in the late 1960s. Attorneys there are also arguing that priests are Vatican employees for the purpose of American law.