Press TV (Iran)
[with video]
An international lawyer says that the Roman Catholic Church and Pope can be sued in the International Court of Justice over hundreds of filed sexual abuses cases.
The comments come as the leader of Catholic church Pope Benedict XVI has officially resigned, ending an eight-year pontificate shaped by struggles to move the church past sex abuse scandals. Meanwhile international lawyers are looking into former Pope Benedict XVI’s legal status to see whether the former pontiff is liable to a legal action over failing to stop child sex abuse by church priests.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Edward Corrigan, international lawyer from What follows is an approximate transcription of the interview.
Press TV: Mr. Corrigan your perspective on this? How likely will this even be allowed that a lawsuit will be able to file against him and that it would actually go to court?
Corrigan: Well, there already are lawsuits that are filed against the pope and naming him as party to the action.
In particular there is a very egregious case of sexual abuse where a priest, Father Murphy, I guess actually he has admitted to this, sexually abused over 200 deaf boys and that there has been a lawsuit initiated there which names former Cardinal Ratzinger as a party and Cardinal Ratzinger was the person in charge of the…, I guess, the Vatican’s special department that looked after keeping, sort of, religious order within the church and also dealt with issues like the sexual abuse and all this. He hold that position for 20 years.
So he clearly had knowledge, in some cases the priests were defrocked, in other cases nothing happened, they were moved, they were transferred. people have criticized this sort of covering up and trying to protect the Roman Catholic Church from scandal.
Press TV: But Mr. Corrigan filing a lawsuit is very different than actually being able to take it into a court of law.
My question is, how likely is that aspect to happen? Do you think that it will actually reach that level?
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