VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Catholic World Report [San Francisco CA]
January 31, 2024
By Christopher R. Altieri
It really is hard to tell what’s going on in Pope Francis’s Vatican, especially these days, but that’s because there’s plenty—too much—to see.
Heading into the weekend, Italy’s Domani published a piece detailing new allegations against the disgraced former Jesuit, Marko Rupnik–inexplicably and intolerably styled Fr. Marko Rupnik—extern of Koper diocese in his native Slovenia, currently resident in Rome and reported to be regularly seen at the Centro Aletti he founded in the early 1990s.
The allegations amount to physical assault and grievous bodily harm.
Basically, the victim alleges that Rupnik broke her right index finger during a “spiritual counselling” session. Maybe he did break the finger, maybe he didn’t. Both Rupnik and Ivanka Hosta (then-superior of the woman’s religious community) allegedly prohibited the victim from seeking medical treatment.
A fracture should show on x-rays, even at many years’ remove from the incident. A “mere” dislocation or other, similar injury could be difficult to prove physically, but the Vatican investigator chiefly responsible has already declared the witnesses against Rupnik to be highly credible.
“I did it for love,” the victim recalls Rupnik telling her. “Now,” Rupnik allegedly told her, “you have the permanent seal of the Society of Jesus.”
Maybe these allegations will be among those a Vatican canonical tribunal eventually tries out, when and if it gets around to trying Rupnik at all. Count on the tribunal to conduct its proceedings in secret. Count on the tribunal to be about as trustworthy as any Court of Star Chamber.
Domani carried the story less than a full week after Pope Francis thanked the Vatican press corps for their “silence” regarding scandals touching the Holy Father and his governing apparatus in Rome, a silence he described as “almost abashed.” The Italian, vergognoso, literally means “shameful”–as many early renderers took it–and could be rendered “ashamed” or “abashed” as the official Vatican translation of the remarks took it as well.
Folks tied themselves in knots for days, arguing–a generous word for it–over the meaning of the modifier. It was a sight to see. The words doing almost all of the really awful work in the sentence were silenzio and grazie.
Silence is a plain word. Silence is a word with plain sense. Silence was doing plain labor in a plain sentence, uttered in the plain light of day. “Thanks” is a plain word, too. “Thanks” did its own plain work.
In Rome, it is business as usual. Journalist Federica Tourn noted in her Domani piece that Rupnik appears to be keeping a relatively low profile. She reports that he is still accompanying friends on visits to Rome’s major seminary, the chapel of which is decorated with Rupnik’s artwork. Italian celebrity priest don Fabio Rosini recorded a talk in the chapel of the Seminario Maggiore, published recently by the vocations conference of Italy’s conference of bishops. The video has several long, lingering shots of the chapel, decorated with Rupnik’s art.
In fairness to Rosini and the CEI vocations guys, they were only following the lead of Pope Francis himself, who used a piece by Rupnik to illustrate video remarks to a South American Marian convention not too terribly long ago. The Vatican’s own communications dicastery continues–intolerably but not entirely inexplicably–to use Rupnik’s art in illustration of its own web content. Perhaps it is only coincidence, as Tourn notes for Domani, that Nataša Govekar–a member of the Centro Aletti leadership, who has published on Rupnik’s devotional art–is in charge of the comms dicastery’s pastoral-theological efforts.
In any case, it has long since been clear that somebody in comms continues to like Rupnik, very much.
This week, The Pillar had a piece on the Belgian bishops’ efforts to get action on the case of Bishop Roger Vangheluwe, revealed in 2010 to have abused his biological nephew for more than a decade. A year later, Vangheluwe confessed–on Flemish television–to abusing another nephew. The Vatican under Pope Benedict XVI allowed Vangheluwe to resign and keep his emeritus status, while the CDF ordered that Vangheluwe undergo “spiritual and psychological treatment” and prohibited him from public ministry.
The thing that got at least one prominent Belgian prelate’s goat in 2011, after the second confession, was that Vangheluwe broke his pinky promise to keep mum and disappear. Sure, the prelate found Vangheluwe’s easy manner on TV untoward–almost as if he were on holiday, several local news outlets reported–but, “The interview was not expedient and the timing even shocking, given the fact that Rome had asked him not to speak and to keep a low profile,” to hear the nonplussed prelate tell it.
The prelate was Archbishop André-Joseph Léonard, who succeeded Godfried Danneels in the See of Mechelen-Brussels, after Danneels resigned in disgrace. Danneels, you may recall, had pressured Vangheluwe’s nephew to keep quiet about what his uncle, the bishop, had done to him. Pope Francis had Danneels with him on the loggia in 2013, when he greeted the faithful for the first time, and invited Danneels to participate in the 2014 synod assembly on the family.
Now, the Belgian bishops are telling the Flemish parliament that Rome’s continued inaction will likely frustrate Pope Francis’s desire to visit the country later this year.
“We know that those responsible in Rome are aware of the magnitude of the scandal and are working for a solution,” the Belgian bishops’ general secretary told parliament late last week. “It will be difficult for Pope Francis to make a peaceful visit to our country in September until there is clarity on this matter.”
“Those responsible in Rome” is cute. There is one guy responsible in Rome. His name is Francis. He is the pope.
One may be forgiven the impression that the Belgian bishops are at some pains to ensure that they do not have a situation analogous to the one that developed in Marseille last year, when Pope Francis visited the French island right before news broke of gentle-tap-on-the-wrist measures against another confessed child molester, Cardinal Jean-Pierre Ricard, native of Marseille and emeritus of Bordeaux.
La Croix had a news piece on the measures, which they published a few days after the pope’s return. It was more thoroughly reported than a quick turn-around on a hot tip, come to think of it. In fact, the measures had been in place since the spring of 2023, several months before the pope’s September 22-23 visit to the ancient French coastal city.
I readily confess that I’m having a hard time with all this.
Christopher R. Altieri is a journalist, editor and author of three books, including Reading the News Without Losing Your Faith (Catholic Truth Society, 2021). He is contributing editor to Catholic World Report.