by Mike Andrew - SGN Staff Writer

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal by the Roman Catholic Church claiming that the Vatican is immune from suits in U.S. courts.

The court issued its ruling on June 28 without comment. Its decision leaves in place a previous U.S. Appeals Court decision that the church must answer charges of child abuse.

The Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) said in a statement that "The Supreme Court's decision gives hope to hundreds of thousands of clergy sex abuse victims across the globe who know lies remain under wraps at the Vatican and will only be unearthed through persistent action by secular justice officials and systems."

The Vatican claimed immunity under the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976 that prevents foreign states from being sued in a U.S. court.

The plaintiff in the suit at issue, identified only as John Doe, charged that he was sexually abused by Roman Catholic priest Father Andrew Ronan on several occasions in the mid-'60s when Doe was 15 or 16 years old. He originally filed suit in 2002.

According to court documents, Ronan molested a number of boys in the mid-1950s as a priest in Ireland and again in Chicago, before his transfer to a church in Portland, Oregon, where he allegedly abused the victim who filed the lawsuit. Ronan died in 1992.

The appeals court ruled that Ronan was legally an employee of the Vatican, acting within the scope of his employment under Oregon law, when he committed the alleged abuse. The Vatican would therefore be liable for his actions under one of several exceptions to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act.

The Supreme Court's decision not to hear the appeal means that the Vatican must answer John Doe's charges in a U.S. court.

The plaintiff's attorney says he plans to depose Pope Benedict XVI.

"I won't start with him; I'm going to work my way up. But this ruling gives me the ability to depose anybody within the organization who has knowledge about the events."

As long as the pope remains in the Vatican he is probably out of reach of U.S. law, but his ability to travel, especially to the U.S., could be compromised by the possibility that he would be served with a court order compelling his testimony in the case.

A separate court case in Kentucky also claims that since U.S. bishops are employees of the Vatican, it must answer for their alleged cover-ups of child abuse by Catholic priests.

The U.S. court decision is only the latest in a series of legal actions that have humiliated the Catholic hierarchy. On June 25, the Vatican lodged a formal protest with the Belgian ambassador over police raids on Catholic institutions in that country.

The home of Cardinal Godfried Danneels, retired head of the Belgian Catholic Church, was raided by police, and even tombs of former cardinals were opened to check for evidence of child abuse that might have been concealed there.

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