National Catholic Reporter ®

National Catholic Reporter ^®

[The following is excerpted from Mr. Allen’s column of July 19, 2002]

Lawyers target Holy See

Despite the fact that the Holy See is a sovereign state and hence theoretically immune from being sued in the courts of other nations, that of course doesn’t stop enterprising lawyers from trying. At the moment, I’m aware of several lawsuits moving through American courts in which the Vatican is among the named defendants.

(For purposes of this report, I’m glossing over the distinction between the “Vatican,” the 109-acre physical headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, and the “Holy See,” the non-spatial sovereign entity headed by the pope that enjoys diplomatic relations with 172 states).

The suits include:

• Alperin v. Vatican Bank, which deals with the Vatican’s alleged role in recycling loot stolen by pro-Nazi Ustasha regime in Croatia during World War II (the Franciscan Order is also named as a defendant);

• Zivkovich v. Vatican Bank, a similar action;

• Dale v. Holy See, a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) suit filed by the Insurance Commissioners of Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri and Oklahoma, seeking $600 million in damages related to an insurance scam pulled by Martin Frankel, allegedly using Vatican cover through an Italian monsignore named Emilio Colagiovanni, now under house arrest in the United States;

• A number of cases related to sexual abuse by priests, including Doe v. Holy See in Oregon; Gomez v. Holy See in Florida; and Doe v. Holy See in Missouri.

On June 28, in a U.S. district court in Northern California, attorneys Thomas Dewey Easton and Jonathan Levy, representing the plaintiffs in the Alperin case, filed a motion to have all these cases coordinated, at least as regards the question of the Vatican’s sovereign immunity. Their argument is that the Vatican should not be found liable for certain kinds of action in one U.S. jurisdiction but not another.

The Holy See has invoked its sovereignty as a core element of its response in these cases. In the Alperin case, for example, Levy told me that Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican’s secretary of state, had asked the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See to intervene, through the State Department, in order to have the suit dismissed. To date that has not happened.

On July 1, attorney Jeffrey S. Lena of Berkeley, California, acting on behalf of the Vatican bank in the Alperin suit, opposed the request to consolidate the cases, as did lawyers Ronald Mallen and Joanna D. Opperman for the Franciscans on July 2.

“This argument is akin to requiring all cases against Ford Motor Company, regardless of subject matter, to be combined in one court merely because Ford may assert a common defense in each lawsuit,” Mallen and Opperman wrote.

Lena argued that a request to consolidate the cases should go to a multi-district judicial panel, not to a particular circuit court, and Levy said the plaintiffs may exercise that option, but will wait a bit longer for the district court judge to rule.

Given the amount of litigation piling up in the wake of the sex abuse scandal, it’s inevitable that the issue of the Vatican’s immunity from liability is going to become more and more a focus in American courts. Hence the fate of Easton and Levy’s motion bears close watching.

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My new book Conclave: The Politics, Personalities and Process of the Next Papal Election (Doubleday) is available at http://www.amazon.com/

The e-mail address for John L. Allen Jr. is jallen@natcath.org

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