Father Hans Zollner, the Vatican's Chair of the Steering Committee of the Centre for the Protection of Minors, looks on as he attends a news conference at the Pontificial Gregorian University in Rome
Wed, December 14, 2022
By Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) -One of the Catholic Church's top sexual abuse experts has called for a review of how his own Jesuit order and the Vatican handled allegations against an internationally known priest and artist.
The case of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik has rattled the Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member, and prompted criticism of the Vatican doctrinal department for not pursuing it further.
"I can understand how victims feel betrayed," Father Hans Zollner, a member of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and the head of Rome's Gregorian University Centre for the study of abuse, told Reuters.
Following Italian media reports that Rupnik had sexually and psychologically abused nuns when he was their spiritual director in his native Slovenia three decades ago, Jesuit headquarters issued a statement on Dec. 2 saying he had been disciplined.
It said it had commissioned an unnamed, non-Jesuit to investigate Rupnik, 68, after the Vatican's doctrinal department received a complaint last year. No minors were involved in the alleged abuse.
The Jesuits gave the results of the investigation to the Vatican department, which closed the case in October, citing the statute of limitations, which automatically halts legal proceedings if they exceed a set time limit from when an alleged crime took place.
"I understand that legally speaking, the statute of limitations applies, but the legal question is not the only one," Zollner said in the offices of the anti-abuse centre. "This is why I ask why the statute was not lifted".
A Vatican source said the doctrinal department had lifted the statute in similar cases before.
Repeated attempts to reach Rupnik through his school for religious art in Rome were not successful and he did not return calls. The Vatican spokesman said he had no comment on the case.
EARLIER COMPLAINT
Father Arturo Sosa, the head of the Jesuit order since 2016, has defended its handling of Rupnik. "Any case like this is painful ... but we have not hidden anything," he told two Portuguese religious media outlets last week.
Sosa said the Jesuits had maintained restrictions against Rupnik even though the Vatican had closed the case "because we want to go further into the matter, to see how we can help everyone involved".
On Wednesday night, Sosa told reporters that Rupnik had incurred automatic excommunication on himself when he granted "absolution to an accomplice" in confession, referring to when a priest has sex with someone and then absolves the person of the sin. The excommunication was later lifted after Rupnik repented, Sosa said.
Rupnik, a mosaics master who has designed chapels around the world, including in the Vatican, is barred from hearing confessions or presiding at spiritual exercises.
Zollner said an alarm had been raised before 2021, referring to a complaint that he said the Jesuit order had received from a nun in 1998 when Rupnik was completing work on a Vatican chapel for Pope John Paul II.
"For the sake of transparency, we need to know who knew something, what and when, and what happened after that," Zollner said. "We could have found out about the different levels of responsibility, which could have prevented all of this," he said, referring to the 2021 complaint.
"I ask myself, and I ask my community, the Jesuits: Who could have known? Who did know? Who perceived something was wrong and did not go further?" Zollner said.
Asked about the 1998 complaint, Father John Dardis, the Jesuits' spokesman, told Reuters that the order had looked into reports about it but had found "nothing in the files".
Zollner said: "Probably we will never know. In most cases there are no documents."
(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Crispian Balmer and Rosalba O'Brien)
Jesuits admit artist excommunicated before new abuse claims
Arturo Sosa
Superior General of the Society of Jesus
- The closed Basilica of Lourdes is pictured May 8, 2020, in Lourdes, southwestern France. The Vatican came under pressure Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, to explain why it didn’t prosecute a famous Jesuit artist and merely let his order restrict the priest's ministry following allegations that he abused his authority over adult women. Mosiacs by Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik decorate several churches and chapels, including the Lourdes basilica. (AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)More
NICOLE WINFIELD
Wed, December 14, 2022
ROME (AP) — The head of Pope Francis’ Jesuit religious order admitted Wednesday that a famous Jesuit priest had been convicted of one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic Church some two years before the Vatican decided to shelve another case against him for allegedly abusing other adult women under his spiritual care.
The Rev. Arturo Sosa, the Jesuit superior general, made the admission during a briefing with journalists that was dominated by the scandal over the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik and the reluctance of both the Vatican and the Jesuits to tell the whole story behind the unusually lenient treatment he received even after he had been temporarily excommunicated.
Rupnik is unknown to most Catholics but is a giant within the Jesuit order and the Catholic hierarchy because he is one of the church’s most sought-after artists. His mosaics depicting biblical scenes decorate the basilica in Lourdes, France, the Vatican’s own Redemptoris Mater chapel, the John Paul II institute in Washington and are due to grace the new basilica in Aparecida, Brazil.
The scandal involving Rupnik erupted last week when three Italian blogs — Silere non Possum, Left.it and Messa in Latino — began revealing allegations of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse against Rupnik by women at a Jesuit community with which he was affiliated in his native Slovenia.
The Jesuits initially responded with a statement Dec. 2 that confirmed a complaint had been received in 2021 but said the Vatican’s sex abuse office had determined that the allegations, dating from the 1990s in Slovenia, were too old to prosecute. The Jesuits said they decided nevertheless to keep in place “precautionary restrictions” on his ministry that prohibited him from hearing confessions, giving spiritual direction or leading spiritual exercises.
The statement posed more questions than it answered and entirely omitted the fact — first reported by Messa in Latino and later confirmed by The Associated Press — that Rupnik had been convicted and sanctioned by the Vatican after a 2019 complaint that he had absolved a woman in confession of having engaged in sexual activity with him.
The so-called absolution of an accomplice is one of the most serious crimes in the church’s canon law and brings with it automatic excommunication for the priest that can only be lifted if he admits to the crime and repents — something Rupnik did, Sosa said in response to a question from the AP.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "said it happened, there was absolution of an accomplice,” Sosa said. “So he was excommunicated. How do you lift an excommunication? The person has to recognize it and has to repent, which he did.”
Sosa had previously insisted the Jesuits weren't hiding anything else about Rupnik. Asked why the Jesuits hadn't revealed the confession-related conviction, Sosa said Wednesday that “they were two different moments, with two different cases.”
Sosa then contradicted the Jesuits’ earlier statement and said the restrictions on Rupnik’s ministry actually dated from that confession-related conviction, and not the 2021 allegations that the Vatican’s sex crimes office decided to shelve because they were deemed too old to prosecute.
There has been no explanation for why the office, which regularly waives statute of limitations for abuse-related crimes, decided not to waive it this time around, especially considering the previous conviction for a similarly grave offense against an adult woman. The office, now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is headed by a Jesuit, has a Jesuit sex crimes prosecutor and had as its No. 2 at the time someone who lived in Rupnik’s Jesuit community in Rome.
Sosa was asked what, if anything, Francis knew about Rupnik's case or whether he intervened. Sosa said he “could imagine” that the prefect of the dicastery, the Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, would have informed the pope of such a decision.
Officials at the Dicastery either didn’t respond to emails seeking comment or declined to comment, referring questions to the Vatican spokesman, who in turn referred questions to the Jesuits.
Superior General of the Society of Jesus
- The closed Basilica of Lourdes is pictured May 8, 2020, in Lourdes, southwestern France. The Vatican came under pressure Tuesday, Dec. 6, 2022, to explain why it didn’t prosecute a famous Jesuit artist and merely let his order restrict the priest's ministry following allegations that he abused his authority over adult women. Mosiacs by Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik decorate several churches and chapels, including the Lourdes basilica. (AP Photo/Bob Edme, File)More
NICOLE WINFIELD
Wed, December 14, 2022
ROME (AP) — The head of Pope Francis’ Jesuit religious order admitted Wednesday that a famous Jesuit priest had been convicted of one of the most serious crimes in the Catholic Church some two years before the Vatican decided to shelve another case against him for allegedly abusing other adult women under his spiritual care.
The Rev. Arturo Sosa, the Jesuit superior general, made the admission during a briefing with journalists that was dominated by the scandal over the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik and the reluctance of both the Vatican and the Jesuits to tell the whole story behind the unusually lenient treatment he received even after he had been temporarily excommunicated.
Rupnik is unknown to most Catholics but is a giant within the Jesuit order and the Catholic hierarchy because he is one of the church’s most sought-after artists. His mosaics depicting biblical scenes decorate the basilica in Lourdes, France, the Vatican’s own Redemptoris Mater chapel, the John Paul II institute in Washington and are due to grace the new basilica in Aparecida, Brazil.
The scandal involving Rupnik erupted last week when three Italian blogs — Silere non Possum, Left.it and Messa in Latino — began revealing allegations of spiritual, psychological and sexual abuse against Rupnik by women at a Jesuit community with which he was affiliated in his native Slovenia.
The Jesuits initially responded with a statement Dec. 2 that confirmed a complaint had been received in 2021 but said the Vatican’s sex abuse office had determined that the allegations, dating from the 1990s in Slovenia, were too old to prosecute. The Jesuits said they decided nevertheless to keep in place “precautionary restrictions” on his ministry that prohibited him from hearing confessions, giving spiritual direction or leading spiritual exercises.
The statement posed more questions than it answered and entirely omitted the fact — first reported by Messa in Latino and later confirmed by The Associated Press — that Rupnik had been convicted and sanctioned by the Vatican after a 2019 complaint that he had absolved a woman in confession of having engaged in sexual activity with him.
The so-called absolution of an accomplice is one of the most serious crimes in the church’s canon law and brings with it automatic excommunication for the priest that can only be lifted if he admits to the crime and repents — something Rupnik did, Sosa said in response to a question from the AP.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith "said it happened, there was absolution of an accomplice,” Sosa said. “So he was excommunicated. How do you lift an excommunication? The person has to recognize it and has to repent, which he did.”
Sosa had previously insisted the Jesuits weren't hiding anything else about Rupnik. Asked why the Jesuits hadn't revealed the confession-related conviction, Sosa said Wednesday that “they were two different moments, with two different cases.”
Sosa then contradicted the Jesuits’ earlier statement and said the restrictions on Rupnik’s ministry actually dated from that confession-related conviction, and not the 2021 allegations that the Vatican’s sex crimes office decided to shelve because they were deemed too old to prosecute.
There has been no explanation for why the office, which regularly waives statute of limitations for abuse-related crimes, decided not to waive it this time around, especially considering the previous conviction for a similarly grave offense against an adult woman. The office, now called the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, is headed by a Jesuit, has a Jesuit sex crimes prosecutor and had as its No. 2 at the time someone who lived in Rupnik’s Jesuit community in Rome.
Sosa was asked what, if anything, Francis knew about Rupnik's case or whether he intervened. Sosa said he “could imagine” that the prefect of the dicastery, the Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, would have informed the pope of such a decision.
Officials at the Dicastery either didn’t respond to emails seeking comment or declined to comment, referring questions to the Vatican spokesman, who in turn referred questions to the Jesuits.
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