Gender Report Card on the International Criminal ... - YWCA Canada

OTP Situations and Cases
namely, Pope Benedict XVI, 538 <strong>Card</strong>inal Angelo
Sodano, <strong>Card</strong>inal Tarcisio Bertone and <strong>Card</strong>inal
William Levada. The complaint requested the
Prosecutor to investigate and prosecute highranking
Vatican officials for rape and other forms
of sexual violence as crimes against humanity
and for torture as a crime against humanity. 539
The complaint presented 20,000 pages of
supporting material, 540 and alleged that sexual
assaults by priests were not an isolated problem,
but have occurred for decades on a widespread
and systematic basis throughout the Church and
across the globe. It is alleged that high-ranking
Vatican officials tolerated and enabled rape
and child sex crimes to occur and to continue
through their policies and practices: namely by
destroying evidence, obstructing justice, shifting
priests to other dioceses, punishing whistleblowers
or blaming victims. The complainants
maintain that, as the Vatican is a centralised
and hierarchical institution, 541 its high-ranking
officials were responsible for the system that
allowed sexual violence against children and
permitted the majority of offenders to go
unpunished.
538 Pope Benedict XVI is sued both in his capacity as
Pontiff and in his former capacity as <strong>Card</strong>inal Joseph
Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine
of Faith (CDF), the entity of the Vatican responsible for
addressing allegations of sexual abuse committed by
priests.
539 OTP-CR-159/11, available at ,
last visited on 25 October 2011.
540 The materials included testimonies, case studies,
declarations of experts, letters, statements, photographs,
findings of multiple commissions of inquiry, and guilty
pleas of bishops.
541 According to Canon Law, 1938 Code c. 331, the Pope has
‘supreme full, immediate and universal ordinary power’.
He is the direct superior of the bishops as heads of the
dioceses who are the heads of parishes lead by priests.
<strong>Card</strong>inals are appointed by the Pope and the College of
<strong>Card</strong>inals serves as the Pope’s supreme advisory body.
Should the Prosecutor decide to investigate
the allegations against Vatican officials, several
jurisdictional and procedural issues will have
to be resolved. Article 12 of the Rome Statute
provides that the ICC has jurisdiction if the
crimes in question have either been committed
on the territory of a State Party to the Rome
Statute or have been committed by a national
of a State Party. Pope Benedict XVI is a German
national and two of the other accused are
Italian, and so are nationals of States Parties,
however <strong>Card</strong>inal William Levada is an American.
Because the United States of America (USA)
is not a State Party to the Rome Statute, it is
unlikely that the Court can exercise jurisdiction
over <strong>Card</strong>inal William Levada insofar as he is
accused for crimes committed in the USA since
crimes committed in the USA do not qualify as
crimes occurred on the territory of a State Party.
Equally, if Pope Benedict XVI is accused in his
capacity as head of the Vatican, he may argue
that he is entitled to immunity as a Head of
State, although Article 27 of the Rome Statute
provides that immunities based on a person’s
official capacity do not exempt that person from
criminal responsibility under the Rome Statute.
In addition, in light of the fact that only crimes
committed after the Court became operational
on 1 July 2002 fall within the ICC’s jurisdiction,
and that the majority of the crimes listed in
the complaint were committed in the decades
before 2002, the Court would not be able to take
into consideration facts or events which occurred
before 1 July 2002. The complainants will also
have to persuasively argue that incidents of child
sexual abuse and related Church activities to
conceal or condone them, which took place after
July 2002, could be considered to rise to the level
of a ‘widespread or systematic attack against a
civilian population’.
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