May 5, 2001
Pope Apologizes to Orthodox Christians but Vatican Attorneys Deny Liability
Pope John Paul II used a historic visit to Greece recently to issue a broad apology for the sins of Roman Catholics against the Orthodox Christian faithful. The Pope was attempting to heal the 1,000-year-old rift between the two Churches. The Pope’s apology was widely hailed as a concrete step in the reconciliation of the two churches.
But on May 25 in a San Francisco Federal courtroom the Vatican’s attorneys will defend the Vatican Bank in a lawsuit filed by Orthodox Christian survivors of genocide in World War II Yugoslavia. During World War II over 500,000 Serbs were murdered by the fanatic Catholic regime of Ante Pavelic in Croatia. The leadership of the Croatian regime known as the Ustashe vanished after the Second World War with much of the gold and silver plundered from their Serb victims.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, California lawyers, Jonathan Levy and Tom Easton, declassified CIA records show that the Ustashe war criminals were granted sanctuary at the Vatican and the profits of genocide valued at as much as 100 million dollars were laundered by the Vatican bank and Franciscan Order. Ustashe war criminals and other Nazis like Adolf Eichman and Klaus Barbie were later whisked away to freedom via the so-called Vatican ratline, set up and managed by Roman Catholic priests.
The Vatican Bank in contrast to the Pope’s historic apology to Orthodox Christians is vigorously defending against the plaintiffs’ claims for an accounting and restitution. The Vatican Bank’s attorneys in papers filed with the court argue the Vatican Bank has immunity because it is owned by the Holy See, the sovereign entity headed by the Pope. Plaintiffs’ legal team hopes that Judge Maxine Chesney will not let the Vatican Bank escape liability and counter that immunity does not apply and the Vatican Bank should be treated like any other financial institution that reaped a profit from the Holocaust.
The lawsuit, Alperin v. Vatican Bank, was originally filed in November 1999 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
Jonathan Levy
Law Offices of Tom Easton and Jonathan Levy
Attorneys for Plaintiffs
Alperin v. Vatican Bank
