VATICAN CITY
National Catholic Reporter
John L. Allen Jr. | Aug. 9, 2013 …
A Jesuit missing in Syria; the Vatican batting 1.000 in American courts
Jeffrey Lena, the lawyer who represents the Vatican in American courts, is still batting a thousand when it comes to sex abuse cases. On Monday, a federal judge in Oregon dismissed the case of John V. Doe v. Holy See, the last standing lawsuit in an American court related to sex abuse that named the Vatican as a defendant.
Two other such cases, one in Kentucky and one in Wisconsin, had already collapsed. In all three instances, the lawsuits were withdrawn at the request of the plaintiff’s lawyers as difficulties mounted of getting around the protections guaranteed the Vatican under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.
So far, the Vatican has fought off these suits without admitting any wrongdoing and without paying a dime in settlements.
The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the main advocacy group on behalf of victims of abuse, effectively paid Lena a backhanded compliment, asserting in a statement Tuesday that “smart and aggressive lawyering” was to blame for the result.
Such lawyering, SNAP charged, “has protected top Catholic officials from having to answer in court for their repeated and reckless secrecy and complicity in a troubling child sex abuse and cover up case.”
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