04 Apr More on Suing the Pope: Maybe He Should Avoid Britain for a While
Happy Easter, everyone! I recognize this is a bit of an unpleasant topic to bring up on a holy day, but it is worth noting that the rumblings about litigation against the Vatican and the Pope over the various child-sex-abuse scandals continue. Lawyers in the UK are actively researching how and whether to bring legal action during the Pope’s upcoming visit. As commenters to my earlier post have pointed out, any claim against the Pope himself, or the Vatican, under international law seems fairly sketchy. But a lawsuit might still be filed. From the AP:
Protests are growing against Pope Benedict XVI’s planned trip to Britain, where some lawyers question whether the Vatican’s implicit statehood status should shield the pope from prosecution over sex crimes by pedophile priests.
More than 10,000 people have signed a petition on Downing Street’s web site against the pope’s 4-day visit to England and Scotland in September, which will cost U.K. taxpayers an estimated 15 million pounds ($22.5 million).
The campaign has gained momentum as more Catholic sex abuse scandals have swept across Europe.
Although Benedict has not been accused of any crime, senior British lawyers are now examining whether the pope should have immunity as a head of state and whether he could be prosecuted under the principle of universal jurisdiction for an alleged systematic cover-up of sexual abuses by priests.
I would have been fairly certain that the UN cannot be sued, and yet the Court of Appeals in The Hague recently took quite a nuanced view on this, though ultimately rejecting the claim. Despite having lost at the trial court and court of appeals level, the lawyers representing the Mothers of Srebrenica have already announced they’ll soldier on, presumably to the Supreme Court, where they’ll lose again, probably even more decisively than at the CoA.
My point is that when a sufficiently grave injustice has occurred, something trivial like “merits” won’t stop the lawyers from suing and appealing.
Given that Marko Milanovic is quite obviously correct that there is no crime against humanity here, I wonder where the universal jurisdiction – referred to in the quote – is supposed to come from. On the other hand, I’m not sure why they would need it. As long as they can find one or a few abuse cases in the UK that should be enough for jurisdiction purposes.
I think one solution might come from attempting a separation of the Vatican/Holy See as subjects of international law from the ‘Catholic Church in the UK’. With some craft and a bit of tongue-in-cheek arguing, it could perhaps be said that, while the Pope, the Holy See and Vatican ambassadors are all immune from prosecution, the Catholic Church of the UK, as a subject (‘juridical person’), is not immune. (That the UK Catholic Church is bound by UK laws in many matters is, in fact, quite reasonably arguable; but there is a whole branch of law devoted to these matters – in Italian it is called Diritto ecclesiastico, in Britain I think it is Ecclesiastical Law – and I do not claim to be an expert at all!). And as Holterman writes, there is no need for universal jurisdiction principles: one abuse in the UK or against a UK subject abroad is more than sufficient under international law on jurisdiction. But, as a more general matter: why do people want to sue the Church and not proceed under criminal law against the individual priests who either committed or, after an abuse was committed, helped covering it up? Isn’t individual responsibility… Read more »
How much money do you think the average priest has?
Dear delenda est [the best nickname on OJ, as already noted by others], surely a conviction and many years in prison for all those who are individually responsible [post-factum aiders and abettors included] should satisfy the Erinyes?
Buttered up by that compliment, Francesco, I agree.
My observation, though, is that the most pertinent question is çui bono, and that a monied defendant allows for the greatest convergence of interests between lawyers and plaintiffs.
Especially a biblically rich defendant 😉