Vatican asking US government help on sex-abuse case?
By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Mar 03, 2005
John Allen of the National Catholic Reporter tells us that during his February 8 meeting with Condoleeza Rice, Cardinal Angelo Sodano asked the US Secretary of State to help extricate the Vatican from a sex-abuse lawsuit filed in the US.
It's not news that someone named the Holy See as a defendant; it's easy enough to add one more defendant in a civil lawsuit.
What's more remarkable is that this lawsuit is being taken seriously enough at the Vatican so that the Secretary of State raised the matter with his American counterpart.
Frankly, if this story had come from another source, I would assume that the reporter had jumbled the facts a bit. But Allen is quite reliable. Fascinating.
Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.
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