“Just who do you think you are, mister? The goddam Pope?!”
Yup, he does. The Pope thinks he’s the Pope. And that being Pope means that he’s above the law. So does the U.S. government and its attorney general, Mr. Gonzales, who now seems more preoccupied with consenting adult pornography — see Alternet’s “Peek: Vagina greater threat than Osama.” And it’s not just Osama who’s had to take a back seat: So have countless boys and girls molested by priests their families trusted.
The United States government has told a Texas court that Pope Benedict XVI should be given immunity from a lawsuit accusing him of conspiring to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian, court documents show.
Assistant attorney general Peter Keisler said in Monday’s filing that, as pope, Benedict enjoys immunity as the head of a state – the Vatican. He said allowing the lawsuit to proceed would be “incompatible with the United States’ foreign policy interests”. (News 24, via JPol)
the Vatican opposes our Iraq policy why aren’t they on the Hugo Chavez shit list?
There you go again … applying logic to matters of religion (not to mention millions of Catholic voters).
There’s no oil under the Vatican. Why do you think Rome had to conquer the Middle East? Oil! Duh!
Hmm, you’re either with us or against us. Except if you’re head of the Catholic Church. Then it doesn’t apply.
Since the Vatican opposes our Iraq policy why aren’t they on the Hugo Chavez shit list?
It’s a matter of priorities. They made squeaking noises just before we invaded and, to the best of my knowledge, have been silent ever since. To the best of my knowledge they’ve never spoken out against a health care delivery system which denies health care to increasing numbers of people based entirely on their income. Terri Schivo aside, they’ve not saying anything about the plans to contain health care costs by cutting medicaid either. But, then, the Church owns hospitals and nursing homes. They’re not saying anything about the broken foster care system but, then, CSS administers said foster care system in so many states.
What they are relentless about is an entirely biased view of human sexual morality which celebrates ‘life’ by denying access to contraceptives and forcing low income women, Catholic or not, to carry to term children they cannot afford to feed or shelter.
What I want to know is why nominally celibate men who shelter and enable pedophiles and have confused pedophilia with homosexuality are regarded as worthy to moralize about sexuality and reproduction at all.
Good one, Colleen. So I guess that means that they’re also all the way for Gonzales’s war on pornography?
So I guess that means that they’re also all the way for Gonzales’s war on pornography?
There’s a war on pornography? I laugh. Protestant ministers are 12 stepping their addiction.
This Pope suffers from the same institutionalized delusion as his shabby extremist predecessor; he actually believes in the doctrine of his own infallablity.
How could he possibly be a target of a lawsuit with such creds.
Anyone who can effectively propagate the message in AIDS ravaged Africa that dying from AIDS is preferable to having sex with a condom, must surely be immune from earthly punishment.
We can only hope he and his predecessor get what they deserve in the afterlife their policies and dogma have sent so many others into prematurely.
Head of state, immunity…??
Wait.. Who was that guy in Panama?
Manuel Noriega. Wasn’t he like, El Presedente or something?
Where is he now?
Oh that’s right. An American jail. Silly me.
Saw that comin.’
I was raised a catholic….The new Pope is a homophobic motherfucking Asshole. He will be greeted in Hell by many other ignorant, hypocritical morons, who spread hate like himself while they were alive. I wonder how many young catholic boys will commit suicide because of him. Assuming all gay people are child molesters is absurd, hateful and moves the church, society and world backwards. He is calling for a witch hunt. He is hidious. I saw it in his evil eyes the minute he came out and was announced the new pope. I will not step foot in a catholic church until he is deceased.
Special rights for the Christian lifestyle. What a load of bullshit. What happened to “the buck stops here”?
“Assistant attorney general Peter Keisler said in Monday’s filing that, as pope, Benedict enjoys immunity as the head of a state – the Vatican.”
Of course our criminal administration people are going to say this you silly people! They think Bushco is above the law so why not all world leaders? Oh except for maybe Saddam? What a bunch of sick fucks!
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Did find a source for latest development of the lawsuit in the District Court of the State of Texas – Judge Lee H. Rosenthal. One of few articles with content on the judicial discussion presented before the court in Texas.
BENEDICT XVI NAMED AS A DEFENDANT IN AN AMERICAN LAWSUIT –
There is a recent follow-up to the lawsuit against Pope Benedict XVI accusing him of covering up the sexual abuse of three children in Houston, Texas. Representatives of the Pope asked President George Bush to confirm that Benedict XVI benefits from juridical immunity as the Head-of-State of the Vatican. If immunity is granted, the Pope is exempt from liability as a defendant.
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Diary on August 18 — A Bit Farfetched to Accuse …
Democracy Now – headline August 18
Lawyers for the Pope have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas.
According to The Chicago Sun Times, the Vatican’s embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state. A State Department spokesperson said this week that the pope is considered a head of state and automatically has diplomatic immunity.
See my diary on John Kerry Communion Issue and another comment.
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FWIW, the State Department and the judge are hardly going out on a limb here. Sovereign immunity has been a part of U.S. law for more than 200 years, and I don’t think that there has ever been any doubt that the Pope qualifies.
Saddam isn’t much of a special case since Congress did pass an “all necessary force” resolution to take over his country.
Noreiga is the hard case here, not the Pope.
In a fit of laziness, I’m just going to repost my comment from a month ago that quoted from the papers arguing in favor of immunity:
From Ratzinger’s Legal Submissions
The case, Doe v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston, is filed in the Southern District of Texas, docket number H-4:05-cv-01047. From various papers submitted on Ratzinger’s behalf, these are the legal arguments:
The key point seems to be that the decision as to whether to accord head-of-state status to any individual rests with the Executive Branch. That’s why 15 years ago, when Noriega ran seriously afoul of the U.S., he could be denied immunity. (Without checking the timeline, it’s also possible that (a) Noriega had not yet been formally indicted as of the date of his forcible removal, which then would moot the immunity issue as he was no longer even a de facto head of state; or (b) if Noriega had already been indicted, his attorneys had not formally contested jurisdiction in court.)
I was pleased to see that it was Ratzinger’s lawyers who put in the plea that he was a Head of State. Fate would have it that another news item involving the Vatican hit the press at the same time.
When it’s necessary, the Vatican State is not a State, or that’s what Navarro Valls implied yesterday after Carla del Ponte, chief prosecutor for the International Tribune for War Crimes in ex-Yugoslavia, went public with her accusation that the Church is not cooperating in the hunt for Ante Gatovina, the Croatian war criminal. Gatovina, like Mladic and Karadzic, is still at large, and prosecutors have reason to believe he’s holed up in a Franciscan monastery in Croatia or Croatian Erzegovina.
In a nutshell, the Croatians accused the investigators of being spies for the M16 last July. The English did not appreciate it, and have led the diplomatic blockade against Croatia’s bid to negotiate entry into the European Union. The British are blunt about it: Turn over Gatovina before even thinking about negotiating. The other day a package bomb blew up in the British Embassy in Zagabria wounding a clerk.
This may have pushed Carla del Ponte to go public. She had been using quiet diplomacy with the Vatican until now. But their Foreign Minister, Archbishop Giovanni Lajola, simply maintained that the Vatican is not a State, does not possess an intelligence service, nor is it obliged by any sort of international treaty to cooperate with the United Nations (or anyone else as a matter of fact.)
Del Ponte replied that the Vatican has one of the best intelligence services in the world. (And I can assure you that if you want to know what’s going on in the most remote corners of the planet, just find out what Catholic missionary group is there and give them a call.)
It was actually John Paul II that had the soft-on for the Croats. One of the most insulting diplomatic moves he made during the Balcan crisis was to make a saint Archbishop Alojzije Stepinac, an accomplice of the Nazi Ustasha dictatorship during the Second World War.
Now we often get a good deal of spin about Papal repentance for the Church’s crimes of the past. We are grateful that Wojtyla got around to apologizing for Galileo’s heresy trial. And even Giordano Bruno is waiting in the wings for a possible revision. But what everyone deplores was the papal decision not to open up the archives for the World War II period. Fortunately we needn’t wait for four or five centuries. The proof of the Church’s profitable complicity with the Nazis, Fascists and Ustashi is very well documented. As well as their Odessa ratlines. It’s hard to kick an old compulsion.
The declarations of Carla Del Ponte were published in the Daily Telegraph.