Vatican moves to shield Pope

Dragged deeper than ever into the clerical sex abuse scandal, the Vatican is launching a legal defence that it hopes will shield the Pope from a lawsuit in Kentucky seeking to have him answer lawyers' questions under oath.

Court documents obtained yesterday by AP show that Vatican lawyers plan to argue that the Pope has immunity as a head of state, that American bishops who oversaw abusive priests were not employees of the Vatican, and that a 1962 document is not the "smoking gun" that provides proof of a cover-up.

The Holy See is trying to fend off the first United States case to reach the stage of determining whether victims actually have a claim against the Vatican itself for negligence for failing to alert police or the public about Catholic priests who molested children.