Judge removes pope from sex abuse lawsuit in Texas

Published: 2005-12-30

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- Responding to a request from the U.S. government, a federal judge in Houston has removed Pope Benedict XVI as a defendant in a sexual abuse lawsuit. "Pope Benedict's motion to dismiss all claims against him is granted on the basis of this court's recognition of head-of-state immunity," U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal said Dec. 22. The lawsuit was filed in 2004 by three young men who say that as minors in 1995 and 1996 they were sexually abused by Juan Carlos Patino-Arango, a seminarian from Colombia who was studying for the priesthood in Houston. Still named in the lawsuit are Patino-Arango; the Galveston-Houston Archdiocese; its head, Archbishop Joseph A. Fiorenza; and Msgr. William M. Pickard, who was pastor of St. Francis de Sales Parish in the mid-'90s when the abuse allegedly occurred there. The suit alleges that the priest and the archdiocese covered up the abuse and helped Patino-Arango flee the country after the parents of one of the plaintiffs brought a complaint in May 1996.

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