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	Pope Not Liable for Abuse, Says Vatican The Star May 18, 2010 http://www.thestar.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=3937067 VATICAN CITY: The Vatican will argue that bishops cannot be considered their employees in its defence of a US priest sex abuse case, their lawyer said, drawing an angry response from a victims group. "This lawsuit is trying to say that the bishop in Louisville is an employee of the pope," Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican's US attorney said in a telephone interview yesterday. "I say that's not true." Three men brought the case over abuse they alleged they suffered at the hands of priests decades ago. They want the Vatican held accountable because the bishop of Louisville, Kentucky, failed to report the abusers. But the Vatican will argue that Catholic dioceses are run as separate entities from the Holy See, and that the only authority that the pontiff has over bishops around the world is a religious one. "The pope is not a five-star general ordering his troops around," Lena said. "The pope does not have the power of a king." And Ciro Benedettini, vice-head of the Vatican press office said: "The Vatican and the Holy Father are not bound by this national jurisdiction, both as head of state and as the head of the Church." Their position echoed comments in April by Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman, who argued that priests could not be considered Vatican employees. "The Church is not a multinational," he said. But a spokesman for one US victims' group denounced the Vatican position. "It's just disingenuous for the Pope to claim he's not in charge of the bishops he selects, appoints, transfers and supervises," said Barbara Dorris, outreach director with the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "The church isn't some loosely-knit hippie commune with diffuse authority," she argued. "It's an ancient, rigid, crystal-clear hierarchy in which bishops ordain, transfer and supervise priests and in which the Pope selects, transfers and supervises bishops." Two other cases, one in Wisconsin and another in Oregon, are also seeking to prove the Vatican's liability for abuse committed by priests in the United States. In recent months, large-scale paedophilia scandals have rocked the Roman Catholic Church in a number of countries, including Austria, Ireland, the pope's native Germany and the United States. Senior clerics have been accused of protecting the priests involved by moving them to other parishes - where they sometimes offended again - instead of handing them over to civil authorities for prosecution. - Sapa-AFP
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