US judge dismisses abuse lawsuit against Vatican

August 22, 2012: A US federal judge has dismissed a sex abuse lawsuit against the Holy See on grounds that the Vatican was not an employer of the accused ex-priest and cannot be held financially liable for the abuse, reports the Catholic News Agency.

Jeffrey Lena, counsel for the Holy See, said on Tuesday that the ruling is “particularly important.” It follows a years-long legal examination of whether the Vatican has sovereign immunity protecting it from such lawsuits.

On Monday US District Judge Michael Mosman, in Portland, Oregon, ruled that the laicised Servite priest Andrew Ronan, who allegedly molested the plaintiff as a teenager in 1965 and 1966, did not have an employee-employer relationship with the Vatican.

Such a relationship was the only remaining legal justification for the lawsuit against the Vatican, Lena said. He added that the federal court examined documents related to the case and found “no evidence that the Holy See was the employer of Ronan, or that it transferred Ronan, or that it knew of the abuse in question until after the abuse had taken place in 1965.”

He said that only the Servite order knew of the abuse until it petitioned for the laicisation of Fr Ronan in 1966. When the Holy See learned of the abuse, Lena said, “it dismissed Ronan from the clerical state very quickly, in just five weeks.”