(ITALY)
Crux [Denver CO]
March 12, 2025
By Elise Ann Allen
Notorious alleged abuser Father Marko Rupnik was recently approached by a journalist at a Rome airport who questioned him about accusations he sexually abused over 40 adult women over a span of decades.
Italian journalist Roberta Rei with the television program La Iene confronted Rupnik at the baggage claim of Rome’s Fiumicino airport, where he apparently arrived from the Schengen area along with a friend or assistant.
In a video of the encounter, published to social media, Rei approaches Rupnik and introduces herself, repeatedly asking if he has a response to allegations of sexual abuse and misconduct with the women who have accused him.
Rupnik in the video declines to comment and places his hand in front of the camera recording him. At other times the hand of his travel companion is seen blocking the screen, and at others, the companion puts himself between Rupnik and the camera.
Rei among other things asks Rupnik about the circumstances of a brief excommunication for absolving an accomplice in violating the 6th commandment, likely someone with whom he’d had sexual relations, and whether he has asked for forgiveness.
She questions Rupnik about the promises of chastity and obedience that he made as a priest, before being expelled by the Jesuits, and whether he believed his actions with his accusers violated those vows.
As Rei follows Rupnik and his companion out of the airport, asking about the specific allegations made against him and his use of spiritual and mystical imagery in his alleged abuse, and the testimonies from women about how their lives were ruined by his abuse, he and his companion try to dodge her by making sharp and abrupt turns, while ignoring her and her questions until they get into a vehicle and leave.
The video was published after a new alleged victim, Sister Samuelle, came forward publicly after two others spoke out last year.
Rupnik, 70, is accused of sexually abusing and manipulating at least 40 different women, most of whom were nuns who belonged to the Loyola Community he helped found in his native Slovenia in the 1980s.
A former member of the pope’s Jesuit order, Rupnik is also one of the Catholic Church’s most renowned modern artists, with countless churches and shrines throughout the world containing his murals, including the Vatican and the famed Marian shrine in Lourdes.
In 2021, nine former members of the Loyola Community complained to the Vatican about Rupnik’s abuse, yet when the allegations against him broke publicly in October 2022, the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at the time led by Spanish Jesuit Cardinal Luis Ladaria, refused to open a formal canonical inquiry, citing a statute of limitations for the abuse of adults, despite the fact that this provision has been waived in other cases.
Despite the DDF’s decision, the Jesuits barred Rupnik from ministry and imposed restrictions on his travel and commissions for new art projects. In December 2022, they invited anyone with other claims against Rupnik to come forward, which yielded 15 new complaints against him.
After refusing to cooperate with an internal Jesuit inquiry, Rupnik was expelled from the order for disobedience in June 2023.
In mid-September 2023, Pope Francis met a key Rupnik ally, who has publicly called the abuse charges a form of “lynching,” and days later an investigation by the Diocese of Rome essentially gave Rupnik’s Centro Aletti in Rome, where he lived and carried out his art projects, a clean bill of health.
At the time, after being ousted from the Jesuits, Rupnik was incardinated into the Slovenian Diocese of Koper and appeared to be free to carry out his ministry unimpeded. However, in the wake of massive public backlash, Pope Francis in October 2023 reversed course, and waived the statute of limitations on the Rupnik case, allowing a canonical trial to proceed.
Rupnik’s case has remained open since, with the Vatican largely silent on the status of the case and when a verdict can be expected.
In May 2024, Irish Archbishop John Joseph Kennedy, Secretary of the Disciplinary Section of the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF), which is handling Rupnik’s case, said the case was in advanced stages.
RELATED: Rupnik case complex, but in ‘advanced stage,’ Vatican official says
However, nearly a year later, there is still no indication of when it might be brought to a conclusion.
In November of last year, the DDF in a communique signed by its prefect, Cardinal Argentinian Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, said that a study group would be formed to more clearly define the crime of spiritual abuse, and typify it in the Church’s Code of Canon Law.
The definition and codification of the crime of spiritual abuse is especially relevant in the Rupnik case, as one of the main aspects of the allegations against him as been the use of spiritual imagery and symbols in his abuse, styling the sexual encounters as a mystical union with God and the Virgin Mary.
RELATED: Vatican to form study group to classify crime of ‘spiritual abuse’
However, no timeline has been provided for when the study group might complete its work, meaning that in the meantime, Rupnik remains a priest in good standing and is unhindered in his ministry and in his ability to accept new sacred art commissions.
Observers also question whether the new crime, once defined and added to the Code of Canon Law, will be able to be applied retroactively, what that would imply either way for the outcome of the Rupnik case and his ability to continue celebrating the sacraments as a priest in good standing.
In the meantime, more alleged victims appear to be coming forward.
Last February two women – Mirjam Kovac and Gloria Branciani – recounted years of psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse they and many fellow sisters endured, saying they sounded the alarm over Rupnik’s abuses in the early 1990s, but were routinely ignored while Rupnik was protected.
RELATED: Rupnik victims call for transparency as case moves forward
During a March 9 airing of the La Iene program on Mediaset, a third woman, Samuelle, came forward publicly, who said Rupnik used to invite her to late-night meetings, warning, “please, be careful not to let anyone hear you because people might have strange ideas seeing you come down to me at 10p.m.”
A consecrated member of the Monastic Fraternity of Jerusalem, Samuelle recounted various traumas she endured at the hands of Rupnik.
“During dinner he was blowing me kisses from a distance. I felt terrible, I looked at my plate, I ate and after three seconds I looked up just to check that he had stopped. He did this in several places,” Samuelle said.
She said Rupnik created a climate in which she felt physically ill and was afraid of him, oftentimes feeling her heart beating fast while she began to sweat, “signs of high anxiety.”
“One time I found myself with him downstairs, he came closer, he talked to me about the mosaic and put his hand on my shoulder. Then his hand went down behind my back and at a certain point he stopped and with his finger started playing with my bra,” she said.
When she pulled away suddenly, she said Rupnik minimized the situation, saying, “it’s nice that we can do this together, because I am a priest, and you are a quiet nun…all pure.”
In addition to questions regarding his own status and the pending outcome of his case as it continues to drag on, the Rupnik affair has also raised questions about just how seriously the Vatican is taking the abuse of adults, particularly adult women.
While it has taken action against top-ranking prelates accused of sexually harassing adult seminarians, such as former cardinal and former priest Theodore McCarrick from the United States, similar decisive action has yet to be taken against individuals such as Rupnik accused of serial sexual abuse of women.