PURITAN NEWS WEEKLY

www.puritans.net/news/

10/14/04

 

 

VATICAN SOVEREIGNTY FACES COURT CHALLENGES

 

By Parnell McCarter

 

 

Attorney Jonathan Levy sent us the following press release:

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200410/1097349913.html

For Two Millennia Vatican has Endured Invasions and Sieges but US Legal
Cases May Hasten Its Demise

For_Immediate_Release:

Two Federal Court cases continue their efforts to hold the Vatican
financially accountable for criminal acts committed by the Vatican Bank.

Alperin v. Vatican Bank, was filed in November 1999 by Serb, Jewish, and
Ukrainian Holocaust survivors against the Vatican Bank, Franciscan order,
and Croatian Liberation Movement. The class action lawsuit accuses the
Vatican Bank of receiving hundreds of millions of dollars of gold and other
assets looted from victims of Croatia's brutal Ustasha regime from
1941-1945. As many as 700,000 people, most of them Serbs, were exterminated
at death camps run by the Nazi-allied government of Croatia.

The case was dismissed in 2003 after the Vatican argued the matter was a
political one and not appropriate for United States courts. However, the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals heard legal arguments by Plaintiffs'
attorneys on October 7, 2004 that the case should be reversed and sent back
to the trial court for further proceedings.

Dale v. Colagiavanni arose out of a bold scheme by Martin Frankel to
misappropriate the assets of several insurance companies totaling hundreds
of millions of dollars through fraudulent means which included an account at
the Vatican Bank. On September 27, 2004, the United States District Court
for Southern Mississippi denied a Vatican motion to dismiss the case.

According to Alperin attorneys, Tom Easton and Jonathan Levy, between the
two cases, Vatican liability may top $1 billion dollars. But according to
the two attorneys who started the current round of lawsuits against the
Vatican in 1999, it is being held accountable in United States courts and
not the ultimate amounts involved may prove the most daunting issue for the
Vatican as an expected new wave of sexual and fiscal abuse cases threaten
the Holy See's very existence.


(Note: The article above underscores why the Vatican sees the US as a real threat, even though both parties stand in opposition to the true Biblical Protestant faith.  This is a case where God is using one wicked party to punish the other wicked party, even as the ancient Medo-Persian empire punished the Babylonian empire.  At the same time as these lawsuits are occurring in US courts against the Vatican, the Vatican is drumming up antagonism against the US in many foreign countries.)