Suing the Vatican

X-posted from my personal blog: Jurist reports that:

A federal judge in Oregon allowed a sexual abuse lawsuit against the Catholic Church to move forward Wednesday, rejecting the Vatican's bid to dismiss the suit for lack of jurisdiction. The ruling allows a Seattle-area man to continue with his claim[complaint, PDF] that the Holy See is liable for transferring the Rev. Andrew Ronan from Ireland to Chicago to Portland, even though the church knew Ronan had a history of sexual abuse.

The ruling strikes me as pretty clearly wrong. In U.S. law, the Pope is regarded as the head of state of the Vatican. See Doe v. Roman Catholic Diocese of Galveston-Houston, 2005 WL 3597695 (S.D. Tex. 2005) (holding that Pope Benedict XVI, as head of the Holy See, was entitled to head-of-state immunity from suit). Because the United States currently accords the Vatican status as a foreign sovereign (i.e., a State), both the Vatican and the Pope as an individual should be immune from suit. As Jurist explains:

Last year, a US district judge in Kentucky ruled that the Holy See is a foreign state subject to immunity protections under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, rejecting the plaintiff's argument that the Vatican is an international religious organization. A federal judge in Texas later ruled that Pope Benedict XVI enjoys immunity as the head of the Vatican, dismissing a civil suit alleging that the pontiff conspired to conceal clergy sex abuse.

For more on enterprise liability in the Catholic Church, see my article The Bishop's Alter Ego.