La Banca del Vaticano aiutò i nazisti?

[syntesy]

Court won't review Vatican Bank Holocaust suit
chi vivrà vedrà intanto la causa sembra proseguire...

Tue Jan 17, 2006 103 AM ET
By James Vicini

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Supreme Court allowed Holocaust survivors on Tuesday to proceed with a lawsuit claiming that the Vatican Bank and a Franciscan religious order profited from property stolen by Croatia's pro-Nazi World War Two government.

The justices declined to review a ruling by a U.S. appeals court that reinstated the suit, which claimed the Order of Friars Minor conspired with the Vatican Bank to facilitate the transfer of gold and other looted valuable assets.

The Holocaust survivors filed the lawsuit in federal court in San Francisco in 1999 accusing the defendants of receiving property stolen from victims of Croatia's brutal Ustasha regime from 1941 to 1945. As many as 700,000 people, mostly Serbs, were killed at death camps run by the regime.

The lawsuit claimed that the stolen property was used after the war to help Nazi war criminals escape from Europe to South America. The class-action lawsuit seeks compensation for the monetary losses suffered by Holocaust survivors.

The Vatican Bank, the financial arm of the Roman Catholic Church, and the religious order founded by St. Francis of Assisi have denied the claims.

A federal judge dismissed the lawsuit in 2003 on the grounds that the claims involved questions that should be handled by the executive or legislative branches of the U.S. government, not by the courts.

But the appeals court disagreed and ruled the case could go forward, even if the claims involved foreign relations and potentially controversial issues.

Attorneys for the Order of Friars Minor and Vatican Bank appealed to the Supreme Court. They argued that resolution of Holocaust-era claims was an issue of foreign relations constitutionally committed to the political branches of the U.S. government, not the courts.

The Vatican Bank's attorneys said the appeals court's ruling threatened "to disrupt the nation's foreign affairs."

Attorneys for the Holocaust survivors replied that the appeals should be rejected.

They said there were "no compelling reasons or extraordinary circumstances" warranting high court review of the case. They said judicial review of wartime property losses does not pose any threat to U.S. foreign relations.

The Supreme Court rejected the appeals without any comment or recorded dissent.


© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

[aguas]

La banca del Vaticano servì anche a salvare i tesori degli ustasha, che, grazie a monsignor Montini, futuro papa Palo VI, poterono rifugiarsi in America Latina e godersi l'oro sottratto agli ebrei e agli ortodossi sterminati.