Pope Benedict XVI has been accused of “crimes against humanity” by two groups representing sex abuse victims in a complaint filed at the International Criminal Court at The Hague. The Pope, along with other top  Vatican officials, “tolerate and enable the systematic and widespread concealing of rape and child sex crimes throughout the world,” according to a statement filed by the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a New York City-based organization.
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CNN reports,
Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi told CNN he was aware of the filing but had no comment.
The International Criminal Court did not immediately respond to a CNN question about whether it believed it had jurisdiction to prosecute the pope.
But Barbara Dorris, the president of SNAP, said it was the natural venue for the case.
“We are convinced this is the proper jurisdiction,” she told CNN. “Who else can investigate violent crimes of a global magnitude? The ICC was created to deal with widespread systematic violent crimes against humanity.”
The executive director of the International Bar Association, on the other hand, said it was unlikely the international court would find there was evidence of crimes against humanity.
London-based The Telegraph adds,
The complaint names Pope Benedict XVI, partly in his former role as leader of the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which in 2001 explicitly gained responsibility for overseeing abuse cases; Cardinal William Levada, who now leads that office; Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state under Pope John Paul II; and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who now holds that post.
Lawyers for the victims say rape, sexual violence and torture are considered a crime against humanity as described in the international treaty that spells out the court’s mandate. The complaint also accuses Vatican officials of creating policies that perpetuated the damage, constituting an attack against a civilian population.
“We have tried everything we could think of to get them to stop and they won’t,” she said. “If the Pope wanted to, he could take dramatic action at any time that would help protect children today and in the future, and he refuses to take the action.”
The odds against the court opening an investigation are enormous. The prosecutor has received nearly 9,000 independent proposals for inquiries since 2002, when the court was created as the world’s only permanent war crimes tribunal, and has never opened a formal investigation based solely on such a request.
Instead, prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo has investigated crimes such as genocide, murder, rape and conscripting child soldiers in conflicts from Darfur to this year’s violence in Libya. Such cases have been referred to the court by the countries where the atrocities were perpetrated or by the UN Security Council.
Also, the Holy See is not a member state of the court, meaning prosecutors have no automatic jurisdiction there, although the complaint covers alleged abuse in countries around the world, many of which do recognise the court’s jurisdiction.
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This is not the first time the 84-year old Roman Catholic leader has been accused of “crimes against humanity” in a complaint filed at The Hague. In February of this year, The New Civil Rights Movement reported,
Pope Benedict XVI is facing charges of crimes against humanity in the International Criminal Court for “the preservation and leadership of a worldwide totalitarian régime of coercion which subjugates its members with terrifying and health-​endangering threats,†and for his part in the Vatican’s pedophile priests molestation and rape scandals, and the Vatican’s “adherence to a fatal forbiddance of the use of condoms, even when the danger of HIV-​Aids infection exists.”