According to the European Court of Human Rights, the Vatican and the Holy See (Pope) has the same legal immunity granted to sovereign states and on Tuesday (October 12) the European Court rejected a case filed by alleged victims of sexual abuse by Catholic priests, reports Euronews.
The EU Court also made it very clear that the immunity also protects it from being sued in local courts which is a reprieve when the church is hit by one scandal after another. Also, the Vatican is also not a member of the Council of Europe and therefore not subject to ECHR jurisdiction, though it was allowed to present written statements in the case as a third party.
The European Court of Human Rights said in a statement, “The Court did not find anything unreasonable or arbitrary in the detailed reasoning which led the Court of Appeal to reach that conclusion. It pointed out that it had itself previously characterised agreements between the Holy See and other States as international treaties,”.
This comes just days after Pope Francis again apologised and expressed shame on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church after a report was published where an estimated 216,000 children have been abused by clerics in the French Catholic Church since the 1950s, the
It dismissed a case brought by 24 French, Belgian and Dutch nationals, who claimed to be sexually abused by Catholic priests when they were children.
They had filed a class-action suit and sought compensation for €10,000 for each victim but the Ghent Court of First Instance said in 2013 that it did not have jurisdiction over the Holy See as he enjoyed “diplomatic immunity” and “state privileges under international law”.
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