Pope accused of crimes against humanity

Pope Benedict XVI has been charged with attempted crimes against humanity along with three other high-ranking priests at the International Criminal Court last week.

Three others are Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican’s secretary of state; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the previous secretary of state and the current dean of the College of Cardinals; and Cardinal William J. Levada, who is head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The New York-based rights group, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), lodged more than 20,000 pages of reports, policy papers and evidence of crimes committed by Catholic clergy against children and vulnerable adults.

“Crimes against tens of thousands of victims, most of them children, are being covered up by officials at the highest level of the Vatican,” said Pam Spees, a lawyer of the CCR. “In this case, all roads really do lead to Rome.”

The Catholic Church has been rocked by a series of sexual abuse cover-up scandals in both Europe and the United States in recent years.

The victims have insisted that the priests who sexually abused them simply moved to different countries and are still in ministry working with children, with the knowledge of church superiors. “National jurisdictions can’t really get their arms around this,” said Spees, urging the ICC to punish the pope and others.

It is not yet clear whether the accusations against the Vatican will fit the ICC mandate. “Crimes against humanity means acts that are committed as part of a widespread or systematic attack directed against a civilian population,” said Mark Ellis, executive director of the International Bar Association.