News & Events

Jun 28, 2010: Supreme Court won’t hear Vatican appeal over Oregon clergy sex abuse lawsuit

Supreme Court won’t hear Vatican appeal over Oregon clergy sex abuse lawsuit
 
By Associated Press
June 28, 2010 | 8:46 a.m.
  
WASHINGTON (AP) ? The Supreme Court won’t stop a lawsuit that accuses the Vatican of conspiring with U.S. church officials to transfer a priest from city to city despite repeated accusations that the clergyman sexually abused young people.The high court Monday refused to hear an appeal from the Vatican, a decision that allows the lawsuit to move forward. No one has ever successfully sued the Vatican over sex abuse by clergy.Sovereign immunity laws

Apr 27, 2010: A Frenzied Pace for Lawyer Behind Vatican Suits

Jeffrey R. Anderson, the lawyer whose pursuit of the Roman Catholic Church has been perhaps the loudest, is the center of his own tornado. As employees race in and out of his ornate offices, Mr. Anderson is planning a news conference in Los Angeles about an abusive priest, answering calls from the family of a victim of another from Florida, and preparing a lawsuit in Milwaukee naming the Vatican and the pope as defendants. And this is only a Monday.

Apr 23, 2010: Vatican: Lawsuit Naming Pope Has No Merit

But the Minnesota lawyer who filed the lawsuit calls that response “predictable” and tells AOL News that it’s the same argument he heard back in the 1980s when he first began suing U.S. dioceses and bishops over allegations they knew about priests sexually abusing young boys and chose to do nothing about it.