A victim of a Catholic priest accused of molesting as many as 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin filed a federal lawsuit in Milwaukee on Thursday against Pope Benedict XVI and other top Vatican officials - the latest effort by victims to hold the Holy See responsible for the handling of clergy sex abuse cases around the world.

The lawsuit alleges that Benedict, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, and others knew of the complaints about Father Lawrence Murphy as early as 1995; that its culture of secrecy helped to perpetuate clergy abuse; and that the Holy See, as the supreme authority over the church, was responsible for decisions local bishops made about Murphy going back to the 1950s.

Filed in the Eastern District of Wisconsin, it is the third lawsuit now pending in U.S. federal courts, and the first to seek - in addition to monetary damages - the release of files the Vatican maintains on thousands of allegedly abusive priests worldwide, said attorneys for the plaintiff, an Illinois man identified in court records as John Doe 16.

"It demands that they disclose the files to the court, so they can be turned over to law enforcement officials around the globe, . . . investigated and prosecuted," said Jeff Anderson, whose St. Paul, Minn., law firm he said has represented victims in 2,000 lawsuits involving clergy sex abuse over the last 25 years.

The Vatican's California-based attorney, Jeffrey Lena, in a statement Thursday called the lawsuit a publicity stunt with no merit that "rehashes old theories already rejected by U.S. courts."

Also named as defendants are the Vatican city-state known as the Holy See; Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who served as Ratzinger's deputy at the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith beginning in 1995; and Cardinal Angelo Sodano, former secretary of state and now dean of the College of Cardinals - who referred to the scandal as "petty gossip" during Benedict's Easter Mass in April.

Documents made public as part of the lawsuit include letters the victim sent to Sodano via registered mail in March 1995, pleading with him to read them to Pope John Paul II in the hopes that he would excommunicate Murphy.

The letters, originally written to Murphy and then-Milwaukee Archbishop Rembert Weakland, lay out in excruciating detail the allegations against Murphy and the devastating effects of his abuse on victims, from mental health problems to suicide and the loss of their faith in the church.

"Everytime I see other priests I wonder, 'Are they molestors, too?' They always remind me of you; a clever wolf, a mortal sinner, a heavy luster who walked among us every night in the Catholic dorm," the victim wrote in the seven-page letter to Murphy, dated Feb. 12, 1995, and copied to Weakland and Pope John Paul II.

"How could you hurt me the way you did," it goes on to say. "I was just a little kid."

The victim, who was in his 40s when he wrote the letters, was molested at St. John School for the Deaf in St. Francis, where Murphy worked from 1950 to 1974, according to the lawsuit. The victim was 12 years old when the abuse began, Anderson said.

A second letter from the victim to Sodano in May 1995 indicates he had not responded to the victim's pleas.

Focus shifted to Vatican

Focus on the clergy sex abuse scandal has shifted in recent weeks from local bishops to the Vatican as victims and news accounts raised questions about how both John Paul II and Ratzinger handled allegations involving pedophile priests in Europe and the United States, including those against Murphy.

The Vatican has long worried about the possibility of legal liability in U.S. courts, according to a 2006 story in the National Catholic Reporter. The story cites a 2005 meeting between Sodano and then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in which he asked the State Department to assert the Holy See's immunity from liability as a sovereign state in a pending lawsuit.

In that case, the court upheld the Vatican's sovereign status, it said.

Federal appeals courts in recent months have allowed cases in Oregon and Kentucky to proceed, although the Vatican has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear an appeal in the Oregon case.

The Vatican has argued that the pope is protected by sovereign immunity in the more than 170 nations that have diplomatic relations with the Holy See. But attorneys for victims cite the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which allows foreign governments and representatives to be sued in some cases involving commercial or private activity.

Some legal experts questioned the Wisconsin lawsuit's prospects.

Nicholas Cafardi, a canon lawyer and former dean at the Duquesne University School of Law, said he doesn't believe Anderson can overcome sovereign immunity hurdles. He said the lawsuit describes the Roman Catholic Church as if it were an international commercial business, and it's not.

"He's alleging an employment relationship between individual priests and the Holy See," Cafardi said. "I'm sorry, but diocesan priests in the United States are not employees of the Holy See. . . . If a court were to accept that, they would be creating a new Catholic Church, not the one that exists now."

But Washington, D.C., attorney Jonathan Levy, a specialist in international law who has tried suing the Vatican Bank over Holocaust claims, said Anderson could succeed in taking advantage of exceptions to sovereign immunity.

"I'd say he's got some new and exciting theories in there why the Vatican should be held responsible for its bad acts," Levy said.

Allegations known since '70s

The Archdiocese of Milwaukee is not named in the lawsuit, and spokesman Jerry Topczewski declined to comment directly on the suit.

But he added, "By the time the Vatican was notified in the mid-1990s, we know of no abuse by Lawrence Murphy that could have been prevented."

A woman who answered the phone at the Papal Nunciature, or embassy, in New York, said all questions must be put in writing and faxed to the Nuncio, Archbishop Pietro Sambi. She could not guarantee he would respond.

The Milwaukee archdiocese, and local police and prosecutors, have known of the allegations against Murphy since at least the 1970s, though victims allege the archdiocese knew as early as the 1950s.

Victims met separately with then-Archbishop William Cousins and the Milwaukee County district attorney's office in the early to mid-1970s, seeking Murphy's removal from the school and criminal charges.

The church initially said Murphy was too valuable to St. John's but later allowed him to resign and move to the Superior Diocese where his family had a home, and he continued to help out in parishes and schools.

Retired District Attorney E. Michael McCann and his then-deputy, William Gardner, have maintained that the cases brought to their office were beyond the statute of limitations and not prosecutable. Victims allege prosecutors knew that at least one case could have been charged.

Archbishop Rembert Weakland wrote to Ratzinger, then head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in 1996 in an effort to have Murphy laicized, or removed from the priesthood.

Documents show Ratzinger's deputy at first endorsed a canon trial and then discouraged it, citing Murphy's age and ill health. Murphy died in 1998, just days after Weakland and the judge in the canon trial drafted letters suggesting they had, or had intended to, halt the case. However, it was not officially dismissed until after Murphy's death.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.