Plaintiffs drop priest abuse case

? Three men who sought to hold the Vatican liable in an American court for sexual abuses by Roman Catholic priests in a Kentucky diocese are abandoning the case.

Lawyers looked to question Pope Benedict XVI under oath but had to leap the high legal hurdle of the Vatican’s sovereign immunity status in the U.S. Plaintiffs filed a motion on Monday asking a federal judge in Louisville to dismiss their claims.

Their attorney, William McMurry, said he was seeking to end the case because of an earlier court ruling that recognized the Vatican’s immunity and failure to turn up new plaintiffs to add to the lawsuit who haven’t yet been involved in a Catholic clergy abuse case.

The lawsuit was considered the first in the U.S. to make it to the stage of determining whether victims had a negligence claim against the Vatican, which argued the plaintiffs never showed a connection between Rome and the American clergy abuse scandal.