MELISSA BLOCK, Host:
This is ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News. I'm Melissa Block.
ROBERT SIEGEL, Host:
NPR's Barbara Bradley Hagerty reports.
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY: In 1996, Catholic bishops in Ireland decided they would begin working with police to help identify pedophile priests. A year later, the Vatican panel wrote back with its assessment of the policy.
SIEGEL: Plaintiffs' attorney Jeffrey Anderson is suing the Vatican, something no one has done successfully before, on behalf of an American molested by a priest. He calls the letter a smoking gun.
BLOCK: This letter is a stunning piece of evidence that the Vatican has control, it demands secrecy, and it failed to protect the kids, as it did our client.
BRADLEY HAGERTY: Anderson is trying to prove that the priest was an employee of the Vatican, and therefore, the Vatican is accountable. He says the 1997 letter and other documents showed the buck stops with the pope.
BLOCK: There is but one entity and one man that is in control of all matters pertaining to sexual abuse and the movement of priests, and that is the Holy See, the pope.
BLOCK: It's not a smoking gun.
BRADLEY HAGERTY: Nick Cafardi is a canon lawyer at Duquesne University Law School. He says the letter to the Irish bishops is bathed in hypotheticals, problems that could arise if the bishops turned over cases to the police.
BLOCK: It doesn't say you can't do this. It says it might be problematical. If I'm an Irish bishop and I get a letter like this, I think, well, okay, that's their opinion.
BRADLEY HAGERTY: However you interpret the Irish letter, it's unclear whether it will help any lawsuit in the United States, says Joe Dellapena, a law professor at Villanova University.
P: If can be shown it applied in the United States, it would, I think, be very damaging.
BRADLEY HAGERTY: But for it to be relevant in U.S. courts, he says, you have to show that the letter was intended to apply to U.S. bishops or that U.S. bishops received a similar warning.
P: If you could show other evidence of Vatican involvement in the United States, then maybe the Irish letter might reinforce an inference, but by itself, it doesn't prove very much about the United States.
BRADLEY HAGERTY: Barbara Bradley Hagerty, NPR News.