The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for St. Paul lawyer Jeff Anderson to sue Pope Benedict on behalf of sex-abuse victims when it refused Monday to hear the Vatican's appeal of an Oregon lawsuit. Anderson, who specializes in filing abuse suits against the Roman Catholic Church, called the decision "the biggest breakthrough in the movement's history."
"This is huge. Really, really huge," he said.
"We've kicked down the iron gates that they've been hiding behind for all these years."
In declining to hear the case, the court upheld an appeals court ruling that the Vatican can be sued for sexual abuse if church officials knowingly reassign priests who have been accused of such acts in their previous parishes.
The Vatican appeal had argued that the U.S. courts lacked jurisdiction over the Rome-based church.
Anderson predicted that now he can eventually depose Pope Benedict.
"I won't start with him; I'm going to work my way up," he said. "But this ruling gives me the ability to depose anybody within the organization who has knowledge about the events."
Before becoming pope, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger oversaw the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the office that disciplines priests for abusive acts.
SNAP (Survivors Network of the Those Abused by Priests) issued a statement saying 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 suit that led to the appeal was filed in 2002 by Anderson in Oregon for an unnamed 49-year-old man who alleges he was sexually abused as a teenager by a priest who had been reassigned after being accused of similar abuses in parishes in Chicago and Ireland.
SIC: STCom