(ITALY)
Catholic World Report [San Francisco CA]
October 25, 2023
By Christopher R. Altieri
It is impossible to absolve Pope Francis of ultimate responsibility for the farcical management of the Rupnik business. Whether by act or omission, he is the author of it.
A disgraced former Jesuit accused of heinous sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse allegedly perpetrated against well more than a dozen victims – most of them women religious – over some three decades, Fr. Marko Rupnik, is now a priest of Koper diocese in his native Slovenia.
Koper’s vicar general told The Pillar that Bishop Bishop Jurij Bizjak agreed to give Rupnik a chance since “Rupnik had not been sentenced to any judicial sentence.”
Rupnik has never been tried for his alleged crimes of abuse. That is because the Vatican department responsible for investigating and prosecuting the crimes of which Rupnik stands accused decided not to waive the statute of limitations so that the accused could stand trial.
A secret Vatican tribunal did find Rupnik guilty, in 2020, of “absolving an accomplice in a sin against the Sixth Commandment” – that’s technical Church jargon for granting absolution to someone with whom the absolving cleric had some sort of illicit sexual liaison – and ratified the excommunication Rupnik incurred when he committed that crime, but the excommunication was lifted almost as soon as it was imposed.
Why that case proceeded to trial and a guilty verdict, while the others did not, remains a mystery.
There is mountainous evidence against Rupnik, much of it collected by the Jesuits themselves, who made a belated but apparently sincere and diligent attempt to bring him to justice between 2019 and 2022. There would be ample opportunity for the accused to confront the numerous witnesses who have come forward – “highly credible” witnesses, to hear the Jesuits tell it – but Rome nevertheless decided not to do justice upon him.
“Father Marko [Rupnik] asked me to have threesomes with another sister of the community,” one victim-accuser recounted to Italy’s Domani, “because sexuality had to be, in his opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, [Fr Marko Rupnik] said, ‘the third person would welcome the relationship between the two’.”
The Pillar translated and published the entire gruesome interview, with Domani’s permission. It paints an unspeakably horrible picture of diabolical manipulation, in which Rupnik worked to a specific modus operandi, warping the mind of his naïve mark and exploiting her insecurities.
The Slovenian bishops – including Bizjak – evidently believe the allegations against Rupnik. Bizjak was among the bishops who signed a 22 December 2022 statement decrying Rupnik’s “unacceptable and reprehensible actions,” and calling on any of Rupnik’s victims who had not yet spoken to contact Church authorities, “so that the truth and a just verdict can be reached as comprehensively as possible.”
To consider incardinating this man is sheer lunacy. It bespeaks moral turpitude. To do the thing is no mere dereliction of duty, but an act of naked disdain for the bodies and souls of everyone Rupnik may touch, an act that scorns Rupnik’s victims and ridicules victims everywhere.
It is craven. It is supine. It is madness.
The specifics of Pope Francis’s direct involvement in l’Affaire Rupnik remain unclear, but he admitted to some direct involvement at one stage, even as he insisted he did not meddle in the case. “I had nothing to do with this,” Francis told Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press in January of this year. Francis also told AP he “always” waives the statute of limitations when victims are either minors or vulnerable adults, but usually doesn’t waive the statute of limitations in other cases.
How anyone in anything remotely analogous to the spiritual care of a diabolically perverted and sadistic cleric shouldn’t be considered vulnerable beggars the most macabre and callous fancy, but that is another matter.
All Pope Francis had to do in order to make sure Rupnik didn’t see justice was … nothing.
“[T]his is very sad and scandalous,” Pope Francis on Wednesday told the participants in the synod on synodality. Only, Pope Francis wasn’t talking about Rupnik. Pope Francis was talking about “the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats or albs and lace-covered robes.”
As soon as the Rupnik story broke, it was clear that the business was very bad. By September of this year, it was evident that the Rupnik business would stain and possibly define Pope Francis’s legacy. This development is catastrophic beyond human reckoning. L’Affaire Rupnik at once eclipses and encapsulates everything awful in l’Affaire Barros, l’Affaire Inzoli, l’Affaire Zanchetta, l’Affaire Danneels, l’Affaire Ricard.
Rupnik has already done prodigious harm to his victims, in body and soul. Now, Bishop Jurij Bizjak of Koper has given Rupnik wherewithal to do even more. Pope Francis has enabled them both. The example Pope Francis has set for bishops the world over cannot but enable the negligent and encourage the wicked, even as it emboldens the depraved.
The farcical management of the Rupnik business gives unequivocable and incontrovertible proof of the nature and extent of the rot in both the hierarchical leadership culture and the organization of power in the Church. Here is contempt for victims, for the faithful, for truth and justice, for decency, for common sense.
It is impossible to absolve Pope Francis of ultimate responsibility for it. Whether by act or omission, he is the author of it.
Even if Pope Francis were by some raw exercise of power tomorrow to intervene and stop this utter insanity, his act would come late and merely confirm that Responsibility, Accountability, Transparency are transparently cynical bromides and rule of law in the Church a feeble imposture, a clumsy counterfeit, an unqualified sham.