A class action has been filed against the Vatican, on behalf of Americans who allege that the Roman Catholic Church has orchestrated a massive decades-long cover-up to protect priests who molested them as children. The action accuses the Holy See of negligence and claims that it is ultimately responsible for the abuses, and seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

Attorney William McMurry, who last year represented 243 victims in reaching a $25.7 million settlement with the Archdiocese of Louisville, filed the lawsuit on behalf of three men alleging abuse as far back as 1928 in the Louisville, Kentucky, area. Besides monetary damages, the lawsuit seeks injunctions requiring the Vatican to "cease its violations of the internationally recognized human rights of children" and "to report all allegations of childhood sexual abuse" in the United States.

US law allows foreign nations to be sued in federal court if either their actions or their "commercial" activities in the United States cause injury here. The lawsuit alleges that church fund-raising constitutes exactly the type of commercial activity contemplated by federal law. The action alleges that the Vatican has sought "to maintain its aura of infallibility and thereby ensure that its parishioners, followers and financial contributors will not lose faith and fail to contribute money and property" to the church. It also alleges that the Vatican violated at least two international conventions -- the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child -- by tolerating sexual abuse.

The action bases its claim on a secret 1962 Vatican document, approved by Pope John XXIII, calling for strict secrecy in handling priests accused of soliciting sex in the confessional. The document, was leaked last year also requires Catholic church leaders to keep secret other allegations of sexual misconduct. Some experts in church law have downplayed the significance of the document, titled "Crimen Sollicitationis" or "Crime of Solicitation." They say it only required secrecy in the church disciplinary process and did not prevent a bishop from reporting crimes to police.

In 2002, when the sexual-abuse crisis peaked, American Catholic bishops approved policies on preventing abuse and barring abusive priests from ministry. The action alleges that the Vatican is still not addressing the role of the hierarchy in the abuse scandal, however.

The lawsuit seeks to certify two classes of abuse victims: those who have received payments from dioceses and those who have not. One of the three plaintiffs in the present action is Michael Turner of Louisville, who also filed the first in a wave of roughly 250 lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Louisville between 2002 and 2003. That litigation culminated in a $25.7 million settlement with most of the plaintiffs last year. Turner was molested by the now-imprisoned Rev. Louis E. Miller in the 1970s, when Turner attended St. Aloysius Church in Pewee Valley.

Another named plaintiff, James H. O'Bryan, 83, of Albion, California, alleges that he was molested by a "Father Lawrence" at St. Cecilia Church in western Louisville in 1928. O'Bryan says he was volunteering in the school library when the priest approached him from behind, put his hand in the boy's pocket and fondled his genitals. He told his mother, who believed him and confronted the priest's supervisor, but the priest and most of O'Bryan's other relatives doubted him. According to Cecelia Price, spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Louisville, a Reverend Lawrence Kuntz worked at St. Cecelia from 1928 to 1935 and died in 1952. Named plaintiff Donald E. Poppe was allegedly molested by the late Reverend Arthur Wood, who died in 1983 and was named as an abuser by 39 plaintiffs who settled with the archdiocese last year.