The Vatican will make its most detailed defence yet today against claims that it is liable for US bishops who allowed priests to molest children.

THE Vatican responded yesterday to allegations it had concealed years of clerical sex abuse by making it clear for the first time that bishops and other high-ranking clerics should report such crimes to police if required by law.

PROTESTS are growing against Pope Benedict XVI’s planned trip to Britain, where some lawyers question whether the Vatican’s implicit statehood status should shield the Pope from prosecution over sex crimes by paedophile priests.

The Vatican, dragged deeper than ever into the clergy sex abuse scandal, is launching a legal defence that it hopes will shield the Pope from a US lawsuit seeking to have him answer questions under oath.