The Vatican confirmed this Monday the appointment of the judges who make up the court in charge of examining the case of the Slovenian priest and artist Fr. Marko Rupnik, a former Jesuit accused of sexual abuse against women.
The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) reported in a statement that on October 9, the five judges of the Court that will deal with the case were appointed.
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To guarantee autonomy and independence, the Vatican confirmed that the court is made up of women and clerics who are not part of the DDF “and who do not hold any position in the Dicasteries of the Roman Curia.”
Although this information was already revealed in July by the prefect of the dicastery, Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, the Vatican made it official this Monday.
In statements to the media, Cardinal Fernández said on that occasion that the objective was “to eliminate the idea that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith or the Holy See had any interest or were under pressure.”
EWTN News requested information from Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni about the eventual publication of the identity of the judges, but at the moment there is no response.
El “Caso Rupnik”
Rupnik faces multiple accusations of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse, as well as abuse of conscience against several nuns in her care for more than three decades in the Loyola Community, co-founded by Rupnik in 1990.
Rupnik, who was expelled from the Jesuits in June 2023 for refusing to obey his superiors, had already been investigated by the DDF in 2019.
In January 2020, he was excommunicated for absolving an accomplice in the confessional of a sin against the Sixth Commandment. However, the excommunication was quickly revoked.
In 2021, after two additional investigations, they came to light more accusations that Rupnik had abused at least 41 women.
After the Vatican refused in 2022 to carry out a canonical process related to the accusations due to the statute of limitations, in October 2023 Pope Francis lifted the statute of limitations on the case and ordered that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith begin a process after detecting “serious problems in the way it was handled.”
In one interview In January of this year, the prefect of the DDF reported that the dicastery he heads had concluded the investigation and specified that the next step was the creation of an independent court.
Almudena Martínez-Bordiú
Graduated in Journalism and Advertising from the CEU San Pablo University in Madrid. Specialized in religious information in Spain since 2015. She has been a senior correspondent for ACI Prensa and EWTN Noticias in the Vatican for two years and is currently a European correspondent based in Spain.