VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Forbes [Jersey City NJ]
June 15, 2023
By Mary Whitfill Roeloffs
TOPLINE
Accusations of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse of adult women over a 30-year period have led to the expulsion of prominent Slovenian Jesuit priest Marko Ivan Rupnik, accused of abusing multiple women after he’d previously been excommunicated, but then welcomed back into the Roman Catholic church.
KEY FACTS
- The Society of Jesus, an order of Catholic priests commonly known as the Jesuits, announced Thursday it has dismissed 68-year-old Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik after allegations that he abused women in his native Slovenia.
- Rupnik, a hitherto renowned artist who has installed mosaics in dozens of high-profile chapels and at the Vatican, made headlines last year when Italian blogs and websites started reporting on years of abuse complaints from women that were dismissed by church authorities as being past the relevant statute of limitations, the Jesuits reported.
- The Jesuits—the order that includes Pope Francis and many high-ranking Vatican officials—last year admitted they’d known about the abuse claims for years and even briefly excommunicated Rupnik in 2020 after he committed one of the most serious crimes in the church’s canon law—absolving an accomplice—by absolving a woman in confession of having engaged in sexual activity with him, the Associated Press reported.
- In a statement Thursday, the Jesuits said they had moved Rupnik to a new community after the excommunication and “offered him one last chance as a Jesuit to come to terms with his past” before his “repeated refusal to obey this mandate.”
- Rupnik has 30 days to appeal the dismissal after receiving the decree on June 14, and will remain a priest in the Roman Catholic church despite no longer being a Jesuit, according to the AP.
KEY BACKGROUND
Rupnik is known throughout the Jesuit community as one of the church’s most famous artists. His mosaics—which can be found in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace and the Saint John Paul II National Shrine in Washington, D.C.—depict biblical scenes. He was previously the head of a Rome-based center for study about the impact of culture on the Christian faith called the Aletti Center. Rupnik was excommunicated for less than a month in 2020 for the absolution-related charge but quickly welcomed back to the church after repenting, the Jesuits said. His reinstatement came with restrictions he later violated, the Catholic News Agency reported. Nine women reported various abuses that occurred in the 1990s to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2021, the Associated Press reported. The Jesuits then invited others to come forward with any complaints about Rupnik during the investigation and 15 did—14 women and one man, a high-ranking official told the AP. The team investigating the allegations offered to meet with Rupnik “without success” after informing him of the accusations, the Jesuits said in February.
WHAT WE DON’T KNOW
The exact nature of the allegations. Italian news sources say they involve the spiritual and sexual abuse of adult women during confession but the statement from the Jesuit group itself did not reveal any details other than to say they did not involve minors.
CRUCIAL QUOTE
Rev. Gianfranco Matarazzo, former head of a Jesuit institute in Italy, tweeted last year that the Rupnik case was a “tsunami of injustice, lack of transparency, questionable management, dysfunctional activity, personalized work, apostolic community sacrificed to the leader and unequal treatment.”
FURTHER READING
If Thy Right Eye Scandalize Thee: What Should Be Done With Father Rupnik’s Art? (National Catholic Register)
The Catholic Church profited from slavery — ‘The 272’ explains how (NPR)