The Court of Human Rights rejects the appeal of 24 European victims. “The Pope and the Holy See cannot be sued for violence”
VATICAN CITY. While the scourge of the pedophilia of the clergy scourges and shakes the French Church after the German one (to be in the latest cases), the European Court denies the right to denounce the Vatican for the sexual abuse of priests. The “immunity” of the Holy See has been recognized. Vatican City and the Holy See cannot therefore be called to trial for cases of violence committed by priests. This was established by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg, which thus rejected 24 plaintiffs – of Belgian, French and Dutch nationality – who had unsuccessfully sued the Sacred Palaces in Belgian courts. The ECHR requested in particular the “immunity” of the Holy See recognized by the “principles of international law”.
It is the first time that he has expressed himself on this thorny topic. Similar or similar sentences to that of yesterday had also been registered in the United States in past years, always after complaints presented by victims of ecclesiastical abusers directed against the Vatican or even the Pope.
The Court “considers that the rejection did not deviate from the generally recognized principles of international law in matters of state immunity” which apply to the Vatican. The Strasbourg court then concluded that there had been no violation of the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights on the ‘right of access to a court’ invoked by the applicants, who claimed that they had been prevented from enforcing the civil law. their complaints, grievances and disputes against the Holy See.
It all started ten years ago, with a collective civil action filed in the Ghent court of first instance: it included a claim for compensation from the Vatican, local church hierarchies and Catholic associations. The reason for the demand for economic reparation was the “damage caused by the structurally deficient way in which the Church would have dealt with the problem of sexual abuse within it.” In practice, the recognition of joint and several liability for the damages suffered and compensation was requested, also in consideration of the silence policy on the abuse issue. But the Vatican “has characteristics comparable to those of a state”, note the European judges, who believe that the Belgian justice therefore had the right to “deduce from these characteristics that the Holy See was a foreign sovereign body, with the same rights and duties of a state “.
The Strasbourg decision comes a few days after the publication of the investigation in the Church of France, from which it emerged that 330,000 minors were victims of religious or lay aggressors in the ecclesial sphere. Yesterday Monsignor Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Bishops’ Conference, met Gerald Darmanin, interior minister in charge of the cult. The Bishop pointed out that in 17 dioceses protocols have been stipulated with the respective proxies “in order to facilitate and speed up the processing of reports for each reported fact”.
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