The court said this is the first case of the ECHR to deal with the defense of the Holy See.
The European Court of Human Rights said that a group of 24 Belgian, French and Dutch abuse survivors attempted to prosecute leaders of the Holy See and Catholic Church in Belgian courts since 2011, but that country’s courts ruled That their jurisdiction is not over the Vatican. explaining his decision on Tuesday.
The ECHR said survivors of abuse fought their way through Belgium’s court system before bringing their case to a European court in 2017.
On Tuesday, the ECHR ruled 6-1 that the Vatican was a sovereign state that could not be prosecuted, and that there was nothing “unreasonable or arbitrary” in the Belgian courts to adopt that position.
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