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By JOHN L. ALLEN JR.
• Pope Benedict XVI
• Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State
• American Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
• Italian Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s nuncio, or ambassador, in the United States
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On the same day that Belgian police raided church offices to seize documents in a sex abuse probe, the Vatican found itself in the courts of another country, this time the United States, trying to fend off attempts to interrogate the pope and other senior Vatican officials in another case involving clerical sexual abuse.
Vatican attorneys filed a brief on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Kentucky in the case of *O’Bryan v. Holy See*, opposing requests for depositions of four figures at the very top of the church’s power structure:• Italian Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s Secretary of State
• American Cardinal William Levada, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith
• Italian Archbishop Pietro Sambi, the Vatican’s nuncio, or ambassador, in the United States
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The requests, the Vatican lawyers argued, are “unprecedented – akin to a foreign plaintiff seeking a foreign court order compelling the depositions of the United States President, Vice President, Secretary of Defense and ambassador.”
Such a move, the brief warns, could have dangerous foreign policy implications.More…