The European Court of Human Rights made a surprising decision in a class action involving sexual harassment: in essence, it was said to assert more accurately that the pope is not an archbishop, although in fact he appoints them and can expel them. .
The same lawsuit was initiated by 24 Belgian citizens against the Vatican who were allegedly harassed by Belgian priests when they were children – He writes for Agence France-Presse. The plaintiffs sued the Holy See because they argued that the Catholic Church’s organization handled the case of priests who raped and molested children in a “structurally inappropriate” manner by bishops who covered the perpetrators rather than reported them.
The suit was originally brought to a Belgian court, but it said they had no jurisdiction to hear the case, given that the Vatican was a sovereign state. The case was taken to the European Court of Human Rights after the appeal which gave the Belgian court justice for the first time.
Confirming the previous ruling, he stated that the behavior of the Belgian bishops was not the responsibility of the Vatican and that the Pope was not their president.
According to Judge Darian Bavley, who drafted the dissenting opinion, the Belgian court did not take into account the evidence that bishops had been appointed and dismissed by the Pope or that the Vatican had ordered an easing of harassment by the Church. The parties have 3 months to decide whether or not to appeal.
