I would have expected the Vatican to come out against the genocide in Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

But then again maybe not.

Don


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A5164-2005Mar3.html

Vatican Asks Rice to Help With Lawsuit

Friday, March 4, 2005; Page A22


A senior Vatican official asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to intervene in a sexual abuse lawsuit in Louisville that names the Vatican as a defendant, but she declined, a Roman Catholic newspaper reported yesterday.

The National Catholic Reporter, in a dispatch from Rome, said Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican's secretary of state, made the request during Rice's Feb. 8 visit to the Vatican. Quoting unnamed Vatican sources, the newspaper said Rice explained that under U.S. law, foreign states are required to assert claims of sovereign immunity themselves.

The suit pending in U.S. District Court in Louisville is one of many sexual abuse claims in recent years that have listed the Holy See among the defendants. Judges generally have dismissed such claims either on First Amendment grounds or because of the immunity that foreign governments enjoy from many kinds of lawsuits. But the Kentucky case is unusual because it is a class-action lawsuit and the Vatican is the sole defendant.