The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco last week dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.
The court on Dec. 29 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, saying in its decision that the Vatican bank was a sovereign entity entitled to the protections of the foreign sovereign immunities act, and that therefore U.S. courts had no jurisdiction.
“The reason we’re disappointed is the court found that dealing in gold teeth from concentration camps was not a commercial act,” said Jonathan Levy, who represents the survivors. Levy said he didn’t plan to appeal the judgment. The victims are also suing the Franciscans, the Roman Catholic order, on identical charges, and that portion of the lawsuit is going ahead, he said. — ap