The Case of the Pope

The Economist described The Case of the Pope as "a fine book that outlines some of the legal arguments swirling around the Vatican, as scandals over clerical child abuse spread from America to Europe and other places. [Robertson] argues that the Vatican's claim to be a state has enabled it to dodge responsibility for penalising child abuse. [He] maintains that the Vatican's insistence on the primacy of canon law—under which child abuse is treated as a spiritual disorder rather than a crime with victims—has obstructed the discovery of truth and perverted the course of (secular) justice. At a minimum, many readers will gain a better understanding of the serious problems that can arise when two legal systems, one secular and the other religious, operate in parallel."[7]

The London School of Economics described it as "a devastating indictment of the way the Vatican has run a secret legal system that has shielded paedophile priests from criminal trial around the world. ... Geoffrey Robertson QC demonstrates a deep respect for the good works of Catholics and their church. But, he argues, unless Pope Benedict XVI can divest himself of the beguilements of statehood and devotion to obsolete canon law, the Vatican will remain in grave breach of the convention on the Right of the Child and in some other respects, an enemy of human rights."[8]

The New Statesman said, "The clerical abuse scandal has plunged the Catholic Church into a crisis unlike anything it has experienced since the Protestant Reformation half a millennium ago. Pope Benedict, the Curia (the ecclesiastical government of the Church in Rome) and the Catholic bishops of the world have been at pains to minimise the appalling PR. But the Pope's attempts to understand the underlying causes of clerical abuse have been piecemeal and inchoate. ... Geoffrey Robertson's scalding j'accuse against priestly paedophile perpetrators, the Vatican and the current Pope will likely infuriate most devout Catholics... He indicts Benedict personally, both as Pope since 2005 and in his former role as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981, for failing to turn paedophile priests over to the civil authorities. Robertson, a senior barrister specialising in human rights cases, moreover argues that the Vatican's pretensions to sovereign statehood have granted the Pope immunity from standing trial for his part in the cover-ups. He also reasons that canon law, the system of Church law which is independent of the civil and criminal laws of authentic nation states, makes prelates and priests complicit in these sex crimes by swearing them to secrecy about any knowledge they might have of clerical abuse."[9]

The Monthly called The Case of the Pope a "fiery" argument that "the Vatican should be treated as a kind of 'rogue state' until it stops using statehood and the ancient rules of canon law to protect paedophile priests."[10]

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