Marko Rupnik: Victims feel betrayed after a year without answers from the Vatican investigation

A year after the Vatican announced the opening of a canonical case against Father Marko Rupnik – an artist and former Jesuit accused of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse – the victims say they feel disappointed and betrayed by the Church’s lack of response and transparency. .

Rupnik has been accused of abusing adult women who were under his spiritual care at a religious community he helped found in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some of these accusations became public through the media in early December 2022, although the priest’s superiors and Vatican officials were aware even several years earlier.

Although Rupnik’s investigation and trial remain pending, the priest remains free to minister in the diocese of Koper, Slovenia, where he was accepted in 2023.

A year ago, on October 27, days before the closing of the assembly of the Synod on Synodality in 2023, the Press Office of the Holy See published a statement in which it stated that Pope Francis had renounced the prescription, which allowed the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) to open a disciplinary file against the priest.

“The Pope is firmly convinced that if there is anything that the Church must learn from the Synod (on Synodality) it is to listen with attention and compassion to those who suffer, especially to those who feel marginalized from the Church,” the Pope said then. Vatican statement.

A year later, at the conclusion of the second session of the Synod on Synodality, its final document, published on Saturday, October 26, called for “healing, reconciliation and the rebuilding of trust” in light of the scandal of the different types of abuse.

Rupnik’s case remains open in the disciplinary section of the DDF, which deals with a wide range of ecclesiastical cases, from sexual abuse of minors to excommunications for schism, as in the case of Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò this summer.

A person who works within the dicastery, who asked not to be named, told CNA that the DDF does not typically comment on open cases, but that it is studying the merits of Rupnik’s case and examining the procedural steps that can be taken and “the mechanism by which justice can be done.”

The DDF wants to be “sensitive, respecting the process we are carrying out,” the person said, noting that all cases of DDF abuses are treated with the same care and attention.

Victim response

However, some of Rupnik’s alleged victims, and advocates for surviving abuse victims, have indicated that the lack of transparency around Rupnik’s case and its evolution is causing pain and scandal.

Jesuit Father Hans Zollner, an expert on abuse prevention, told CNA by email from Bogotá that he had no information about Rupnik’s case in the DDF, but “uncertainty, lack of information or lack of transparency in any kind “The procedure creates a lot of discomfort and potentially a lot of anxiety in trauma victims, as it triggers the memory of the hurtful experience.”

Anne Barrett Doyle, director of Bishop Accountability, a US-based nonprofit dedicated to helping victims of clergy abuse, told CNA: “The Vatican’s delay in issuing a verdict in the Rupnik case further inflicts “harms its victims and scandalizes the faithful.”

“We hope that Pope Francis will order a resolution soon,” he said. “This is not the transparency that has been promised nor the efficient process that mercy demands. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” he added.

Two former religious women, former members of the Loyola Community that Rupnik co-founded, shared their testimony and identities publicly for the first time at a press conference earlier this year.

Gloria Branciani, an alleged victim, told CNA by email on Saturday that she feels “betrayed once again” for not having received a response from the Vatican a year after the investigation began. “Once again, no one is responsible for the very serious abuses I suffered,” he said.

Branciani, who is Italian, presented her case twice to the Vatican; The second time he did it together with four other alleged victims in April.

“I first reported Rupnik in 1993,” Branciani said. “In 2021, the Church once again asked me to testify about the abuse I suffered; both times (there was no) response from the ecclesiastical authority,” he stated.

He said he expects “a clear position (from the Church) in favor of the victims without further ambiguities that cause more suffering and discredit.”

“I hope that the just words of condemnation of the scourge of abuse of nuns will finally be followed by concrete actions, which have not existed to date, for me and for all the other victims of Rupnik,” Branciani added.

Mirjam Kovač, another alleged victim who went public in February, told CNA via email on October 26 that “for now” she believes there is a lack of transparency on the part of the Vatican in the Rupnik case.

“When I think about what my sisters have gone through, and to a certain extent I too, I still feel pain and disappointment, both because of the abuse and the way they were treated by the authorities,” said the former religious of Slovenian origin. “I hope that the institution and those who represent it try with all possible means to build relationships about truth and justice. Not only with words, but above all with actions.”

Rupnik’s situation

In August 2023, Rupnik was accepted for priestly ministry in the diocese of Koper, in his native Slovenia, after being expelled from the Jesuit order for disobedience.

Asked about the priest’s current whereabouts and the status of his priestly ministry, the diocese of Koper referred CNA to an October 2023 press release stating that he was accepted into the diocese “on the basis that the bishop de Koper has not received any document that Reverend Rupnik has been found guilty of the alleged abuses before an ecclesiastical court or a civil court.”

The statement also stated that “as long as Reverend Rupnik has not been found guilty in a public trial before a court, he enjoys all the rights and duties of diocesan priests.”

The Holy See Press Office did not respond to CNA’s request for information on Rupnik’s status, where he is living, where the canonical process stands at the DDF and whether there are restrictions on his ministry while he is under investigation.

There were calls for the Vatican to investigate Rupnik at the time the allegations against him were made public, in late 2022, but the doctrinal dicastery said then that he could not be investigated because too much time had passed since the alleged abuses.

Pope Francis lifted the prescription almost a year later, and the DDF investigation into Rupnik began.

Decisions about Rupnik’s work

Rupnik’s case has attracted enormous public attention due to his notoriety as a Catholic mosaic artist and founder of an art and theology school in Italy.

The priest’s works, and works in the same style by the students of his art school, adorn hundreds of churches, sanctuaries and chapels around the world.

Following the accusations against him, a debate arose over whether the artist’s works should be covered, removed or – in the case of online photos or prints – stopped being used out of respect for victims of sexual abuse by clergy.

The Vatican’s own Dicastery of Communication has been criticized for continuing to display Rupnik’s art on its websites for the saints’ holidays.

This summer, the lay Catholic fraternal order of the Knights of Columbus announced its decision to cover the mosaics created by Rupnik in the two chapels of the National Shrine of Saint John Paul II in Washington, D.C., and in the chapel at the Knights’ headquarters. in New Haven, Connecticut, at least until the Vatican’s formal investigation into the Slovenian priest’s alleged abuse is concluded.

A few days before the Knights’ announcement, the bishop of Tarbes and Lourdes (France), Jean-Marc Micas, stated that, although he personally believes that the Rupnik mosaics in the Marian shrine should be removed, he is waiting to make a final decision. about his withdrawal in the face of “strong opposition.”

As a “first step,” the French bishop said the Rupnik mosaics would no longer be illuminated during the nightly Lourdes rosary procession.