A federal court in Mississippi on Feb. 2 dismissed a 10-year-old lawsuit accusing the Vatican of complicity in a scheme to bilk insurance companies for more than $200 million. The state insurance commissioners of Mississippi, Tennessee, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas had filed the lawsuit in 2002, charging the Vatican and Msgr. Emilio Colagiovanni of racketeering and fraud. The commissioners claimed that Monsignor Colagiovanni and the Holy See had aided financier Martin Frankel in purchasing small, ailing insurance companies, whose assets he then siphoned off, leaving them unable to pay claims. Jeffrey S. Lena, an attorney for the Holy See, said the dismissal “was not the result of any settlement agreement” and that the insurance commissioners had requested the court’s action “of their own accord.”
Vatican Suit Dropped
Show Comments (
)
Comments are automatically closed two weeks after an article's initial publication. See our comments policy for more.
The latest from america
In Los Angeles, people stay for the movie credits. After the awful images of these fires are gone, they will stay to rebuild their city, too.
Catholic Charities USA is now accepting donations to its Los Angeles Wildfire Relief initiative, and the L.A. archdiocese has created a dedicated relief fund.
Warning of “the increasingly concrete threat of a world war,” Pope Francis called for “the diplomacy of hope” in his address to the ambassadors of the 184 countries that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See.
Pope Francis has appointed Cardinal Robert McElroy as Archbishop of Washington, D.C., and Sister Simona Brambilla, an Italian Consolata missionary, as prefect of the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life.