VATICAN CITY (VATICAN CITY)
Verdict - Legal Analysis and Commentary from Justia [Mountain View CA]
December 4, 2025
By Leslie C. Griffin
“I have to fuck you to save you,” said the priest.
Nuns vs. the Vatican is a documentary that tells the story of Marco Rupnik, a Jesuit priest and famous mosaic artist, whose art adorns many Catholic churches. What the nuns kept secret for decades was that he sexually and spiritually abused them. Gloria Branciani is the lead victim in this film. When she was young, after talking with this glorious priest, she decided she would join the Loyola community he had created. She was not sure she wanted to be a nun, but he warned her she would be far from God if she were not.
Rupnik started by taking off her shirt when he asked her to model for a mosaic. Then he visited her apartment when her roommate was gone. He violently forced her into oral sex, which was shocking to a young woman who did not know anything about sex. When she later raised her fear that she might get pregnant, he told her that she could play the abortion game to take care of that. The last straw was when he asked her to join a threesome because it was like the Holy Trinity. Did she want two priests or two women to join them sexually? She said no to that, and left the community. She suffered for years from the legacy of the priest’s abuse.
The Holy Trinity and sex? It is frightening to hear how Rupnik regularly talks about Catholicism and the body belonging together. This is pretend-theology, which is really a gross theological justification for assault. The film shows how priests hide their assaults behind abusive theology.
Gloria reported her abuse to church superiors. Repeatedly. But they did nothing about it. One bishop is said to have burned all the abuse letters she sent so there would be no record of them in church files.
One very smart question arises in this documentary: how can an adult be abused? The film explains that the nuns were young and were trapped in a convent under the complete control of the priests, who run everything in the church. Gloria was coerced into sex. That is how adults are abused.
Some abusive priests were sent to treatment centers. The “treatment” centers, however, were like spas, with all kinds of sports and entertainment, and not any evidence of treatment. Even the treatment was false. One priest who was abused by another priest was sent to such a center, and was surrounded by priest abusers. He suffered while there. Why did they send him there? He adds the priest abusers showed no remorse while they were allegedly being treated. The depiction of the treatment centers reveals a system designed for public relations rather than rehabilitation, serving primarily to protect the church’s image.
This documentary shows some confusing investigations. They start and they finish, with no real penalty to the accused. For example, apparently Rupnik was excommunicated in 2019, but somehow that excommunication was quickly lifted. After some pressure, the Jesuits finally dismissed him from their Society of Jesus. He is still a priest, however, with voluntary acceptance of him by the Bishop of Slovenia, the place where he originally abused Gloria and others.
Rupnik’s mosaics survive as an expensive business so he can keep being revered from place to place. We learn that the new Pope Leo removed his artwork from Vatican websites. Are they removed from all the churches? No. The film forces the audience to grapple with a difficult question: Can we separate the art from the abuser? The fact that Rupnik’s mosaics still adorn the Vatican walls serves as a visual reminder of the Church’s reluctance to erase him, even as they claim to support his victims.
Barbara Dorris tells of her horrible abuse by another priest. That priest got her pregnant and then the priests tried to abort the fetus. Their procedure was “botched” and Dorris almost died. She remembers the pain and the blood. The priests called a doctor for help. He shamed Barbara, telling her she was the “scum of the earth,” a whore, and he would not help her except the good priests had asked him to.
The documentary shows Professor John T. Chibnall, who was a professor of psychiatry at St. Louis University, a Jesuit university. He and his colleagues researched how much abuse nuns suffered by asking them about it. They discovered that one-third of women had been abused since joining the convent. “That was astounding to us,” said Chibnall. They sent their report, A National Survey of the Sexual Trauma Experiences of Catholic Nuns, to Archbishop Justin Rigali. They never heard a word back from the church.
The popes received notification of the severity of the abuse but did nothing about it.
The church thinks sexual abuse is a sin, not a crime, so the police are never called. The nuns reported to their superiors, and to bishops, and the popes knew about it. A late message of the movie is that abuse victims should call the police, not their superiors. The police should help to prosecute the crime of abuse openly, and not hide it in the church where no one else can see it.
BishopAccountability’s co-founder, Anne Barrett Doyle, appears toward the film’s end. She brought Gloria and her supporters to speak publicly about their abuse. BishopAccountability collected all the Catholic abuse documents it could find. Doyle warned that the church often destroys the bad documents.
Unfortunately, the investigations suggest that there are even worse abuse stories out there. We just do not hear them because Rupnik is more prominent. Thirty more nuns have brought charges of abuse to the Vatican since Gloria spoke.
In October 2025, the church selected a jury to hear the charges against Rupnik. We do not yet know when it will take place.
I thank all those nuns who had the courage to report their church’s abuse, and urge other victims not to be afraid to keep reporting. My hope is that the law can protect them when the church will not.
Dr. Leslie C. Griffin is the William S. Boyd Professor of Law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas Boyd School of Law. Prof. Griffin, who teaches constitutional law and bioethics, is known for her interdisciplinary work in law and religion