One of two court actions filed by a Florida lawyer against the Catholic Church and the Vatican focuses on the role of the church in knowingly transferring an abusing Irish priest from Ireland to the US in the 1960s.
The case lodged by Mr Jeffrey Andersen, a lawyer who has handled hundreds of sex abuse cases against the church, is on behalf of an anonymous plaintiff, "John Doe", who alleges the late Father Andrew Ronan abused him while serving as priest in St Albert's Church in Portland, Oregon.
The suit claims that church documents show that Ronan admitted abusing a youth while in Armagh in the mid-1950s and the conclusion that he should not be trusted around children. The priest was a member of the Order of the Friar Servants of Mary, known as the Servites.
Despite this knowledge he was moved in 1963 to St Philip's High School in Chicago, where he is alleged to have molested three boys, and then on to St Albert's. The New York Times reports that the Archdiocese of Chicago claims to have no record of the abuse, while the Archdiocese of Portland and the Servites did not respond to inquiries.
Mr Andersen also filed a suit alleging abuse by a religious brother of an 11-year-old boy at a religious school in Tampa, Florida, in 1987. The brother was also transferred to another school just after police turned up to investigate the allegations.
Attempts to sue the Vatican have not been successful because of its protected status as a sovereign state. Mr Andersen claims he will show evidence of an international obstruction of justice. He told journalists the cases were "not about mistakes" but "deceit".
"It's about concealment of wrongdoing. Every road leads to the Vatican because it's the Vatican that has said to these bishops and superiors, 'Keep this secret'," he said.
