By PAOLA TOTARO - THEAGE.COM.AU
Added: Fri, 10 Sep 2010 03:43:47 UTC

Thanks to Mike for the link

Note: this is about the book featured on the RD.net homepage and soon to be released in the US as well. It was released on Sept 8 in the UK. Click here for more information and to purchase in the UK.

THE Vatican should be treated as a kind of ''rogue state'' by the rest of the world until it stops using statehood - and the ancient rules of the canon law - to protect paedophile priests, according to veteran human rights lawyer Geoffrey Robertson, QC.

Mr Robertson, a UN judge, argues that the Catholic Church is the only religion permitted under international law to claim the privileges of statehood and its leaders immunity from civil or criminal action.

In his new book, The Case of the Pope: Vatican accountability for human rights abuse, to be published in Australia this weekend, Mr Robertson has laid out a powerful and cogently explained case in which he urges the international community to press the Catholic Church into abandoning canon law, the ancient set of ecclesiastical rules that also define disciplinary provisions for offences ranging from sex crimes to ordaining women.

However, these punishments, sometimes meted out under mediaeval written procedures run by fellow priests, allow ''neither cross-examination and medical examination nor DNA testing'' and ''no punishment worthy of that name''.

''The worst that can happen, other than an order to do penance, is 'laicisation', that is, defrocking, which permits the paedophile to leave the church and get a job in a state school or care home without anyone knowing of this conviction. Canon law has no sex offenders registry.
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TAGGED: ABUSE, CHILDREN, LAW, POPE, VATICAN/ROMAN CATHOLICISM