The Vatican has always given precedence to Church law, called Canon Law, over local criminal law in dealing with ecclesiastical crime.

It does not easily tolerate interference by civil authorities in ecclesiastical matters.​ In December 2013 it refused a UN request for data on abuse on the grounds that it only released such information if requested to do so by another country as part of legal proceedings.​ The UN committee's recommendations are non-binding and there is no enforcement mechanism.​

UN orders Vatican to reveal any sexual abuse cover-ups

2013 The Church serves 1.2 billion who are mostly poorest people in the world.

 

6/27/14 Jozef Wesolowski, Vatican Ex-Ambassador, Convicted Of Sex Abuse

The Vatican's former ambassador to the Dominican Republic has been convicted by a church tribunal of sex abuse and has been defrocked, the first such sentence handed down against a top papal representative. The Holy See recalled the Polish-born Wesolowski on Aug. 21, 2013, and relieved him of his job after the archbishop of Santo Domingo, Cardinal Nicolas de Jesus Lopez, told Pope Francis about rumors that Wesolowski had sexually abused teenage boys in the Dominican Republic. The case is particularly problematic for the Vatican since Wesolowski was a representative of the pope, accused of grave crimes that the Holy See has previously sought to distance itself from by blaming the worldwide sex abuse scandal on wayward priests and their bishops who failed to discipline them, not Vatican officials.  The case has also been delicate because Wesolowski was both ordained a priest and bishop by his Polish countryman and former pope, St. John Paul II.

2/5/14 The UN has accused the Vatican of "systematically" adopting policies allowing priests to sexually abuse thousands of children. 

The UN has said that the Vatican should "immediately remove" all clergy who are known or suspected child abusers.  The UN watchdog for children's rights denounced the Holy See for adopting policies which allowed priests to sexually abuse thousands of children.  In a report, it also criticized Vatican attitudes towards homosexuality, contraception and abortion. The UN's Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) said the Vatican should "immediately remove" all clergy who were known or suspected child abusers.  In a strongly-worded report, it lambasted the Holy See's "practice of offenders' mobility", referring to the transfer of child abusers from parish to parish within countries, and sometimes abroad. It complained that the Holy See had not acknowledged the extent of crimes committed and had not taken the measures necessary to address cases of child sexual abuse and to protect children.​

How has the Vatican responded?​
The sexual abuse of children was rarely discussed in public before the 1970s, and it was not until the 1980s that the first cases of molestation by priests came to light, in the US and Canada. Vatican officials submitted publicly to questioning for the first time in January 2013, before a UN panel in Geneva, but refused to supply data on abuse cases.

BOYSTOWN NEBRASKA

 

John DeCamp, attorney who filed suite on behalf of abuse victim who lived at Boys Town 
which was under the Arch Diocese of Omaha Nebraska.
John DeCamp book about the secret White House-linked national child sex-ring entitled The Franklin Cover-up.
A June 29, 1989 Washington Times article entitled, “Homosexual Prostitution Probe Ensnares Official of Bush, Reagan,” states: “A homosexual prostitution ring is under investigation by federal and District authorities and includes among its clients key officials of the Reagan and Bush administrations, military officers, congressional aides and U.S. and foreign businessmen with close ties to Washington’s political elite.’”[41]
DeCamp, a former Nebraska state senator and decorated Vietnam War vet, told TomFlocco.com "there are tons of pictures still left; law enforcement is currently looking for them," adding, "you can also assume there are senators and congressmen implicated; otherwise this would not be such a big issue."  But no federal official has stepped forward to protect Rusty Nelson's life, as Congress would be reluctant to hold hearings or force a federal prosecutor to probe its own members for sex acts with children--still punishable by law.

 

1/7/14 USA Superior Court Judge Emilie H. Elias ordered the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California to release 30,000 pages of classified Catholic files that name some high-ranking Church officials.

The documents relate to Vatican priests accused of molesting children, and were used to help more than 550 plaintiffs settle with the archdiocese in 2007 for a record-breaking $US660 million.​ It is believed that the names revealed in the documents range from priests at local churches, various bishops and cardinals, Pope John Paul II, and then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI today) who, since 2001 oversaw clerical sex abuse cases for the Vatican. As is now being revealed by the international media, the priesthood culture that operated under Pope John Paul II covered up the most grievous crimes and sins of child sex abuse, and many perpetrators were shielded by John Paul II himself, one example being the late Fr. Marcial Maciel Degollado, a Mexican pedophile priest who founded the Legionaries of Christ.​ The imminent release of this enormous collection of incriminating files may reveal a central Vatican secret about Pope John Paul II and assist the case currently in the International Criminal Court in The Hague to try Pope Benedict XVI and three cardinals for ‘crimes against humanity’.​

12/3/13 Vatican rebuffs United Nations sex abuse inquiries​
The Holy See insists it is "separate and distinct" from the Roman Catholic Church​

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child put a wide-ranging questionnaire to the Holy See - the city state's diplomatic entity - last July, asking for detailed information about the particulars of all sexual abuse cases notified to the Vatican since 1995.  The questions included whether priests, nuns and monks guilty of sexual crime were allowed to remain in contact with children, what legal action had been taken against them, whether the Church required clergy to report abuse to secular authorities and whether complainants were silenced.  In its response, the Holy See insisted that it was "separate and distinct" from the Roman Catholic Church, and that it was not its practice to disclose information about the religious discipline of clergy unless specifically requested to by the authorities in the country where they were serving.​

The Vatican City State is a political entity, an independent country, which exchanges ambassadors with most countries in the world and is a non-voting member of the United Nations. The Pope is its head of state. Here is the official website of the Vatican City State: http://www.vaticanstate.va/EN/homepage.h...

The Holy (or Apostolic) See is the diocese of the Rome, the chief diocese of the Catholic Church. The Pope is the bishop of Rome and therefore the chief bishop of the Catholic Church. Here is the official website of the Holy See: http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm