Nuncio granted immunity in sex case: ThePost.ie


TCH Archives > Sunday Business Post > 2004/03/28 > Nuncio granted immunity in sex case

Nuncio granted immunity in sex case
Sunday, March 28, 2004

By Kieron Wood

The Papal nuncio was granted diplomatic immunity in a High Court action seeking damages for clerical sex abuse, it has emerged.

In the case of Paul Molloy v Bishop Brendan Comiskey, Archbishop Luciano Storero and Fr Sean Fortune, the Department of Foreign Affairs directed the chief registrar of the High Court to issue a certificate that Storero was immune from being sued under section 47 of the 1967 Diplomatic Relations and Immunities Act.

Storero was appointed nuncio to Ireland in November 1995 at the age of 69. As apostolic nuncio, he automatically became dean of the diplomatic corps. He died in October 2000.

Wexford solicitors Simon Kennedy & Co had tried to name Storero in the lawsuit against the former Bishop of Ferns and Fortune, a paedophile priest.

Fortune killed himself in 1999 while awaiting trial on charges of buggery, gross indecency and sexual assault. His paedophilia had been known to the Church authorities since the early 1980s, and the nuncio was said to have been personally informed of the allegations against him.

Kennedy said he found it "extraordinary that an emissary of an associate member of the United Nations would invoke the protection of immunity and contest its obligation to explain itself over its failure to act in accordance with all of the charters to which it encourages others to aspire, promote and promulgate". Following a question from The Sunday Business Post,the secretariat at the nunciature responded: "The Apostolic Nunciature would point out that it is not its practice to comment on any specific legal case."