NORTHERN IRELAND
Tyrone Times
Published on Thursday 30 August 2012
A US court has delivered a landmark ruling that the Vatican cannot be held legally liable for the activities of a paedophile priest who is alleged to have sexually abused a boy at Benburb’s Servite Priory more than fifty years ago.
Former Benburb cleric Rev. Andrew Ronan, who died in 1982, was at the heart of a landmark legal case in the US which could have resulted in Pope Benedict being sued over sex abuse claims.
The Vatican had sought to halt the lawsuit which accused the Roman Catholic Church of transferring Rev. Andrew Ronan from parish to parish – starting in Benburb and moving to St. Phillip High School in Chicago and then to St. Albert’s Church in Portland, Oregon – despite repeated accusations of sexual abuse in all three positions.
Ronan’s history of sexual abuse allegedly dated to the 1950s at the Benburb priory.
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