BREAKING NEWS

(Taken from www.Traditio.com , a traditional Catholic Internet site)

Benedict XVI, Must Face the Music in U.S. Federal Court for Sex-crime Cover-up
Judge Rules that the Case against the pope and the Vatican
can proceed; Pope is not immune

A United States federal judge in Portland, Oregon, ruled on June 7, 2006, that a sex-crimes lawsuit against New Vatican can move forward with its claim that new pope bears responsibility for a presbyter who was transferred from city to city even though he was known to be a child molester. The judge rule that New Vatican did "not offer evidence to contradict this allegation of its involvement in transferring a known child-molester."

In a stunning blow to New Vatican’s attempt to exculpate itself from sex crimes on the basis of "diplomatic immunity," U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman rule in his decision that there are exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act, under which the Vatican is typically immune from the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Rejecting New Vatican’s bid to dismiss the case; Mosman ruled that there was enough of a connection between the Vatican and the presbyter, who died in 1992, for him to be considered a New Vatican employee under Oregon law.

Attorney Jeffrey Anderson of St. Paul, Minnesota, who filed the lawsuit, called the judge's ruling a "titanic legal victory." Anderson said it was "the first time any court has held or acknowledged there is a basis in law to hold the pope accountable for cover-up and concealment and this international movement of predatory priests [New church presbyters]."

The lawsuit filed in 2002 by a Seattle-area man claims that New Vatican, the archdiocese of Portland, and the archbishop of Chicago conspired to protect the presbyter by moving him from Ireland to Chicago to Portland despite a history of sex crimes. In the ruling, the judge noted that the presbyter had admitted to sex crimes at the archdiocese of Armagh in Ireland before he was moved to St. Philip's High School in Chicago, where he admitted to attacking three boys. The presbyter was then placed at St. Albert's Church in Portland, where the plaintiff claims that the presbyter repeatedly attacked him in the late 1960s.