(no subject)

[iftsiga]

Of interest to a few of you: Vatican to bar homosexual priests: NYT (whether you're some form of alternative Catholic or simply from a "look at the new fundie pope go, next he'll excommunicate women who have orgasms in marriage, ha ha" standpoint.)

Comments

[xauenmurph.livejournal.com]

And a flaming hypocrite. And immune to prosecution!

U.S. Asks Court to Dismiss Abuse Suit That Names Pope

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 21, 2005

By The Associated Press The Justice Department has told a Texas court that a lawsuit accusing Pope Benedict XVI of conspiring to cover up the sexual molestation of three boys by a seminarian should be dismissed because the pontiff enjoys immunity as head of state of the Holy See.

In a filing on Monday, Peter Keisler, an assistant United States attorney, said that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would be "incompatible with the United States' foreign policy interests."

There was no immediate ruling from Judge Lee Rosenthal of the Federal District Court in Houston. But American courts have been bound by such "suggestion of immunity" motions submitted by the government, Mr. Keisler's filing says.

A 1994 lawsuit against Pope John Paul II, also filed in Texas, was dismissed after the federal government filed a motion similar to the one filed by Mr. Keisler.

Mr. Keisler's motion had been expected, because the Vatican Embassy in Washington had asked the United States government to issue the immunity suggestion and do everything it could to have the case dismissed.

The pope, the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, was named as a defendant in a civil lawsuit by three plaintiffs who say that Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, a Colombian-born seminarian on assignment at St. Francis de Sales church in Houston, molested them during counseling sessions in the church in the mid-1990's.

Mr. Patino-Arango has been indicted in a criminal case by a grand jury in Harris County, Tex., and is currently a fugitive.

[simmeringhatred.livejournal.com]

This is part of the reason why they wanted the Vatigans status upgraded to "independent state". It was a way of forstalling integration into the modern world and its banking systems in return for mumbling some magic over Mussolini and the fascists.
The court should argue that the suit was filed on Ratzinger before he was Pope, and that the US constitution does not recognise religious title as setting anyone apart from anyone else. The case will still get thrown out- no-one likes to upset a jesus freak (or twenty million) anymore, no matter what denomination.