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PDF versionNazi-loot suit against Vatican dismissed
Dec. 31, 2009
WASHINGTON -- A California appeals court dismissed a lawsuit against the Vatican bank seeking restitution for Holocaust survivors who said the bank stored and laundered millions of dollars worth of assets looted by a Nazi-backed regime in Croatia.
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Dec. 29 upheld a federal District Court ruling that said that as an agency of a sovereign state, the Vatican bank is immune from such lawsuits. The 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act protects other countries from being sued in U.S. courts, the court noted.
The lawsuit sought an accounting from the Vatican of assets the plaintiffs allege were stored and laundered by the church under the Nazi-backed Ustasha government in Croatia. It also asked for restitution and damages.
The class-action suit was originally filed in 1999, on behalf of potentially hundreds of thousands of concentration camp survivors of Serbian, Jewish, Roma and Ukrainian background and their heirs. It currently has about 28 named plaintiffs, according to their attorney.
Still remaining is a similar lawsuit against the Franciscan order, which also was dismissed by the Northern California District Court and is on appeal to the 9th Circuit.
Jonathan Levy, a Washington-based attorney who represents the plaintiffs, told Catholic News Service Dec. 30 that it hadn't yet been decided whether to appeal the 9th Circuit ruling involving the Vatican bank to the Supreme Court.
Levy said there is a stronger connection between the Croatian assets and U.S.-based Franciscan entities than there was to the Vatican, creating what he believes is a better case for pursuing the religious order for redress.
The case started after the U.S. State Department in 1998 issued a report linking the Vatican to the disappearance in 1945 of the treasury of the "Nazi Puppet State of Croatia," according to background material on the plaintiffs' Web site, www.vaticanbankclaims.com.
The site says that during the war some Franciscans were "militant Catholics" who "led pogroms against Orthodox Christian Serbs, Roma and Jews" and that Franciscans in Rome helped smuggle the Ustasha treasury out of the country. The Ustasha ran a brutal Nazi-backed government in Croatia between 1941 and 1945.
In a November order finding the lawsuit against the Franciscans fell outside the jurisdiction of the federal court, District Judge Maxine Chesney left open the door to refiling the case in a state court.
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Levy told CNS that there are connections linking the missing assets to the Croatian Franciscan Custody based in Chicago, making it possible the plaintiffs will pursue their claims in a state court.
The U.S.-based lawsuit was filed after Swiss banks agreed in 1998 to pay $1.25 billion in restitution to people who said the banks stole, concealed or sent to the Nazis hundreds of millions of dollars worth of property owned by Jews.
Dismissal of the suit is far
Dismissal of the suit is far from an exoneration, either of the Vatican Bank or of the Franciscans.
The stink of suspicion will remain until these matters are clearly and openly dealt with.
Maybe it's time that the
Maybe it's time that the World Court gets involved. It's taken long enough! Soon, all of those who suffered the loss of their properties, money, etc....... will be dead! Is that what the Church is waiting for? No witnesses, who remain alive?
I predict this Vatican Bank Scandal will prove to be as explosive as the Priest Pedophilia Scandal! When will the Vatican learn?
This lawsuit was just another
This lawsuit was just another stunt by those who hate the Catholic Church. The lawyers working for the plaintiffs would have always known this lawsuit would be dismissed. But even a dismissal gives them plenty of free publicity.
Sure the lawyers worked for
Sure the lawyers worked for ten years for nothing? The Vatican and Franciscans know that the people behind the lasuit will not give up, Serbs are known for their stubborness and the main witnesses deposition testimoy has been filmed and archived. Since when is jurisdiction an excuse for laundering the profits of genocide, shame on the Vatican and its scofflaw Pope.
The "main witnesses" were one
The "main witnesses" were one and his testimony was hearsay, double hearsay and total speculation. This lawsuit is simply and anti-Catholic and anti-Croatian diatribe looking for money and "assests" that don't exist. There is a book written by Professor Jere Jareb that studied the archival material related to this "looted" gold. His conclusions were threefold: first, the communist Partisans intercepted and returned about 2/3s or whatever gold was taken out of the central bank of Zagreb, Croatia at the end of the war, from fleeing Ustasha, none of whom were Franciscan priests; second, British troops in southern Austria took most of the rest of the remaining material from Ustasha, again no priests involved, in exchange for not repatriating the Ustasha to the partisans. The British archives are totally unavailable for research here. People complain about the Vatican archives being closed. The British are even worse; third, no Franciscan priests were involved in either laundering money or smuggling Ustasha. None of the allegations of the plaintiffs' multiple complaints include the names of any Franciscan priests involved. Moreover, "Dr." Jonathan Levy, one of the plaintiffs' lawyers only took the deposition of William Gowen, the only witness deposed, a former small fry at the American OSI office in Rome, to use his deposition in his doctoral dissertation. So let's get real. Those are all facts which "Dr." Levy doesn't provide.
Dear ANONYMOUS... Do you deny
Dear ANONYMOUS...
Do you deny that one of the well-documented commandants of the Jasenovac
death camp was one FATHER MIRASLAV TOMASLAV FILIPOVIC...known to be a priest of the Order of Friars Minor and a resident monk of the Petricevac Franciscan Monastery?
As Catholics we really have
As Catholics we really have to be careful of the conclusions we derive at.
This is way out of our league and as with the sex abuse cover up over many years, we were left wanting because we couldn't believe these attrocities done in our name, to our own children possible.
We haven't even touched on the treatment of some of the most brilliant minded men of our past excommunicated and classed as heritics.
It doesn't matter which Pope sits on the Chair of St Peter.
Anything is possible.
The Bank of Rome beget the
The Bank of Rome beget the Bank of England, which beget the US Federal Reserve. The Vatican controls the global money supply and charges interest for use of currency. With that power and control, is it any wonder the lawsuit did not succeed?
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