Pope Ratzo’s looking for a “get out of jail free” card (via DailyKos) :

Lawyers for Pope Benedict XVI have asked President Bush to declare the pontiff immune from liability in a lawsuit that accuses him of conspiring to cover up the molestation of three boys by a seminarian in Texas, court records show.

The Vatican’s embassy in Washington sent a diplomatic memo to the State Department on May 20 requesting the U.S. government grant the pope immunity because he is a head of state, according to a May 26 motion submitted by the pope’s lawyers in U.S. District Court for the Southern Division of Texas in Houston.

Joseph Ratzinger is named as a defendant in the civil lawsuit. Now Benedict XVI, he’s accused of conspiring with the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston to cover up the abuse during the mid-1990s.

I guess it’s considered “anti-Catholic” to point out that a man of god (ha!) has been helping sexual predators rape little boys, but it does raise the question of whether or not god is responsible for the loophole that Ratzo is exploiting. Just imagine how much less junk food news we would have had to endure if Michael Jackson had simply declared himself the “head of state” at Neverland ranch.