Pedophilia: the ECHR dismisses French, Belgian and Dutch plaintiffs who sued the Vatican

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) on Tuesday dismissed 24 plaintiffs who had unsuccessfully sued the Vatican before the Belgian courts for acts of pedophilia committed by Catholic priests.

The ECHR invoked in particular "the immunity" of the Holy See recognized by "principles of international law".

The applicants, of Belgian, French and Dutch nationality, had been dismissed by the Belgian courts, which had invoked the immunity from jurisdiction of the Holy See.

JC and others v.

Belgium, judgment: Rejection by the courts of their jurisdiction to hear an action against the Holy See enjoying immunity from jurisdiction: no violation https://t.co/XvWC3iSJAi #ECHR #CEDH #ECHRlegalsummaries

- ECHR CEDH (@ECHR_CEDH) October 12, 2021

The ECHR, which expresses itself for the first time on this issue, has ruled in favor of the Belgian courts.

"The Court judges that the rejection (...) did not deviate from the principles of international law generally recognized as regards immunity of the States" and which apply to the Vatican, she notes in a press release.

The court which sits in Strasbourg thus concluded that there had been no violation of the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights on the “right of access to a court” invoked by the applicants, who claimed to have been prevented from doing so. to assert their grievances against the Vatican in civil proceedings.

They demanded reparation

They had brought in 2011 in Belgium a civil collective action for compensation against the Vatican, leaders of the Catholic Church in Belgium and Catholic associations, recalls the Court in its press release.

They demanded compensation because of "the damage caused by the structurally deficient way in which the Church would have faced the problem of sexual abuse within it", according to the same source.

The Vatican "has characteristics comparable to those of a state", further note the European judges.

They believe that Belgian justice was therefore entitled to "deduce from these characteristics that the Holy See was a foreign sovereign, with the same rights and obligations as a State".

"The total failure of the applicants' action actually results" from bad "procedural choices" that they "did not change" during the procedure "to clarify and individualize the facts in support of their actions" , concludes the Court.

Read also Compensation for victims of sexual abuse in the Church: who will pay and how?

This decision comes a few days after the publication of the work of the Independent Commission on Sexual Abuse in the Church (Ciase) in France, which estimated at 216,000 the number of people victims of a priest or a religious since the 1950s, even 330,000 if we add lay aggressors in connection with Church institutions.