UNITED STATES
Salon
By Mary Elizabeth Williams
As leader of the Catholic Church, a pope wears many hats – and not just the big and pointy kind. He is the bishop of Rome. He is heir to the seat of St. Peter. He is the guy who runs the Pontifex Twitter account. He’s also head of the Holy See. And as such, he gets some interesting perks. Like diplomatic immunity.
When the 85-year-old Pope Benedict XVI steps down from his job later this month, he will no longer be a head of state. Perhaps that’s why he’s chosen to stick around Vatican City. As Reuters noted recently, staying at the Vatican – its own distinct sovereign territory – means he’ll be able to enjoy his retirement in the comfort of “legal protection from any attempt to prosecute him in connection with sexual abuse cases around the world.” How convenient!
During Benedict’s reign, a glut of horrific sex abuse cases, some dating back several decades, have shaken up the Catholic Church worldwide. And as they have continued to emerge, the institution has faced an unprecedented set of moral and legal challenges. In 2010, the United States Supreme Court denied the Vatican’s invocation of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 in a lawsuit filed against the Holy See involving allegations of abuse by Father Andrew Ronan of Oregon. Last year, however, in district court, Judge Michael W. Mosman dismissed the case. And just earlier this month, Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony was stripped of his official diocese duties after the release of thousands of pages of documents revealing his complicity in shielding sexually abusive priests from justice. Six years ago, the diocese reached a landmark $660 million settlement with victims. Mahony, by the way, is still planning on journeying to Rome later this month to help choose the new pontiff. This is the kind of man who gets to decide who’s pope, folks.
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