{"id":99,"date":"2010-04-27T17:30:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T17:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/pope-watch-vaticans-us-attorney-victims-advocate-face-off-in-abuse-lawsuits.html"},"modified":"2010-04-27T17:30:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-27T17:30:00","slug":"pope-watch-vaticans-us-attorney-victims-advocate-face-off-in-abuse-lawsuits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/pope-watch-vaticans-us-attorney-victims-advocate-face-off-in-abuse-lawsuits.html","title":{"rendered":"Pope Watch: Victims’ Advocate vs. Vatican’s Attorney in Clergy Abuse Lawsuits"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Anderson has represented hundreds of Catholic clergy abuse victims, going back to the 1980s when he was one of the few attorneys taking on these kinds of cases. Two of his lawsuits currently seek damages from the Holy See <\/a>— in other words, Pope Benedict. In these cases, he is going up against Jeffrey Lena, the Vatican’s U.S. attorney.<\/p>\n

The lawyers have very different styles, both professionally and personally; I compared them in a Religion News Service story <\/a>this week. Anderson has been the subject of a lot of media coverage<\/a> over the years, including a profile in tomorrow’s New York Times<\/a>; Lena is newer to the scene<\/a>, and has generally avoided publicity until now.<\/p>\n

Check back tomorrow for the complete quotes from my interview with Lena, and share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n

*Click here to <\/span>subscribe to Belief Beat <\/span><\/strong><\/a>and <\/span>click here to <\/span>follow Belief Beat on Twitter<\/strong><\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeff Anderson has represented hundreds of Catholic clergy abuse victims, going back to the 1980s when he was one of the few attorneys taking on these kinds of cases. Two of his lawsuits currently seek damages from the Holy See — in other words, Pope Benedict. In these cases, he is going up against Jeffrey…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-99","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nPope Watch: Victims' Advocate vs. Vatican's Attorney in Clergy Abuse Lawsuits - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/pope-watch-vaticans-us-attorney-victims-advocate-face-off-in-abuse-lawsuits.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Pope Watch: Victims' Advocate vs. Vatican's Attorney in Clergy Abuse Lawsuits - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Jeff Anderson has represented hundreds of Catholic clergy abuse victims, going back to the 1980s when he was one of the few attorneys taking on these kinds of cases. Two of his lawsuits currently seek damages from the Holy See — in other words, Pope Benedict. In these cases, he is going up against Jeffrey…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/pope-watch-vaticans-us-attorney-victims-advocate-face-off-in-abuse-lawsuits.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-04-27T17:30:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Pope Watch: Victims' Advocate vs. Vatican's Attorney in Clergy Abuse Lawsuits - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/04\/pope-watch-vaticans-us-attorney-victims-advocate-face-off-in-abuse-lawsuits.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Pope Watch: Victims' Advocate vs. Vatican's Attorney in Clergy Abuse Lawsuits - Belief Beat","og_description":"Jeff Anderson has represented hundreds of Catholic clergy abuse victims, going back to the 1980s when he was one of the few attorneys taking on these kinds of cases. 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A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, she has previously written for The New York Times and other media outlets. She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=99"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/99\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=99"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=99"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=99"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}