New Pope involved in Cover up?

According to a report in the Chicago Sun Times, lawyers for the new Pope are asking for Mr. Bush (I am trying to remember to no longer call him president, remember) to make the Pope immune from legal liability in lawsuits that allege that he was involved in church efforts to hide the molestation of children.

Now, would these lawyers reach out to the Bush administration in this manner if there wasn't something to the idea that he may have played a role in the efforts of the Catholic church to hide evidence of the mistreatment and abuse of children? This is the new Pope? Where was the media? Hell, where are the media now? This is incredible, what else might him, his office, or others around him have been involved in? We need an inquiry into this. What did he know? What did his office do regarding these matters of alleged abuse?

Consider for a moment that the office for the defense of the faith was the former inquisition so there is a history of abuse on multiple levels. Of course as the brief article notes, it is not because the administration in the church did nothing wrong that has prevented examination of the actions of high church officials -- it is because they have been granted immunity or have not been served with papers. Well, that makes me feel so much better...

VATICAN CITY -- Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.

The Vatican's embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion submitted by the pope's lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas in Houston.

Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now Benedict XVI, he's accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Gerry Keener, said Tuesday that the pope is considered a head of state and automatically has diplomatic immunity.

Lawyers for abuse victims say the case is significant because previous attempts to implicate the Vatican, the pope or other church officials in U.S. sex abuse proceedings have failed -- primarily because of immunity claims and the difficulty serving Vatican officials with U.S. lawsuits.