Holocaust Survivors' Suit Against Vatican Bank Dismissed By 9th Circuit

In Alperin v. Vatican Bank, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed on sovereign immunity grounds a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors against the Vatican Bank. ABC News reports that the "9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. courts. Holocaust survivors from Croatia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia had filed suit against the Vatican bank in 1999, alleging that it stored and laundered the looted assets of thousands of Jews, Serbs and Gypsies who were killed or captured by the Nazi-backed Ustasha regime that controlled Croatia. They sought an accounting from the Vatican, as well as restitution and damages. The court didn't rule on the allegations. In its decision, the court said the Vatican bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR, was a sovereign entity entitled to the protections of the foreign sovereign immunities act, and that therefore U.S. courts had no jurisdiction. The pope himself has been granted such protections in U.S. courts hearing clerical sex abuse cases... Jonathan Levy, who represents the survivors, said he thought he had sufficiently shown that the Vatican bank engaged in commercial activities in the United States, which can serve as an exemption to the protections granted by the immunities act." Tweet