AN ALLEGED victim of an Irish paedophile priest can take the world’s first sexual abuse lawsuit against the Vatican, an American court has ruled, writes Sean O’Driscoll.

Michael Mosman, a US district judge, lifted the Vatican’s diplomatic immunity. He said the Vatican appeared to be involved in an “international conspiracy” to spirit Fr Andrew Ronan out of Ireland and between parishes in America.

The case stems from the transfer of the late Fr Ronan from Ireland to America in the early 1960s, after he allegedly sexually abused a boy in Co Tyrone.

In a hard-hitting ruling, Judge Mosman noted that “without warning parishioners of a known danger, [the Holy See] placed a priest it knew to be a child molester in a position in which, for the third time, he would have private access to minors.”

Judge Mosman also said that the Holy See did “not offer evidence to contradict this allegation of its involvement in transferring a known child-molester” and said Fr Ronan could be considered a Vatican employee under Oregon law.

The suit claims there was an international conspiracy to move Ronan from Ireland after he allegedly sexually abused a boy while working at a seminary in Benburb, Co Tyrone. After he was moved to America, Ronan admitted to church superiors that he sexually abused three boys at a Chicago school before he was transferred to Portland, Oregon. He was defrocked in 1966.

Michael Finnegan, a Minnesota-based lawyer representing one of the victims, described the decision as “absolutely huge” and said he was very confident that his firm, Anderson Advocates, would be able to prove the case in court.

But Finnegan predicted that the Vatican would keep filing motions to delay the case because it did not want its authority structure revealed to the general public. “They have many secrets and they will do anything they can to stop those secrets from coming out. It could take years to get them to court,” he said.

The ruling follows a four-year legal battle in which the Vatican insisted that the alleged victim spend at least $40,000 (£21,700) translating all legal documents into Latin, the official language of the Holy See.

The Vatican twice rejected translations by two American Latin professors, saying their translation of “court”, “conspiracy to commit fraud” and “defendant” and many other phrases were incorrect. The two professors hired by the Anderson firm also had to translate modern terms such as “fax number” (numerus isographicus) and e-mail (inscriptio electronica) as well as dense legal arguments relating to foreign immunity. The Vatican gave up its battle against the translations last December.

Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican’s California-based lawyer, said that the judge had rejected two other arguments for lifting the Vatican’s diplomatic immunity and added that the plaintiff was still a long way from proving any Vatican liability for Fr Ronan’s actions.

American firms that specialise in abuse cases are increasingly focusing on the Vatican because many dioceses close to settling hundreds of millions of dollars in claims are teetering on the verge of bankruptcy.

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