Cardinal Fernandez discusses Fr. Rupnik: What did we learn?

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith is working—slowly—toward a full penal trial for the disgraced former celebrity artist-priest, Fr. Marko Rupnik (olim Fr. Marko Rupnik SJ), an accused abuser of dozens of victims, most of them women religious.

That’s according to the head of the powerful curial department, Victor Manuel Cardinal Fernandez, who granted an interview to Madrid’s archdiocesan weekly Alfa y Omega, published on Thursday, January 23, 2025.

“[T]he Dicastery has concluded the stage of gathering information—that was in very different places—and has made a first analysis,” Fernandez said. “We are now working to set up an independent tribunal that will move on to the final phase through a criminal judicial process,” Fernandez said.

That is news—even big news—that deserves serious attention and unpacking.

Rupnik: What happened (and what didn’t)

Up until Fernandez said it out loud and on-the-record, there was no solid indication the case would go to trial.

After all, DDF—then styled the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith or CDF—closed the book on Rupnik in October 2022, declaring the abuse charges against him statute-barred even though there was mountainous evidence already collected, ample opportunity for the accused to confront witnesses, and a strong recommendation from investigators in favor of a trial.

“There was a case to answer,” read the timeline released by the Society of Jesus in December 2022—only Rupnik didn’t have to answer, because CDF archived the case.

Until he did, maybe, after Francis—in the face of incandescent global outrage over Rupnik’s incardination as a priest in good standing of the Diocese of Koper in Rupnik’s native Slovenia—ordered the dicastery (by that point known as DDF) to re-examine the evidence.

Pope Francis’s decision to lift the statutory bar on the charges against Rupnik—and it bears mention here that the Vatican has still not seen fit to publish the list of specific charges against the pope’s onetime confrère—made things worse rather than better.

The decision paved the way for either a show trial or a snow job, neither of which would bring clarity to the muddy waters beneath which is hidden the exact nature and full extent of Rupnik’s alleged monstrous misdeeds. Also—and more importantly, from the point-of-view of institutional analysis—a sham trial or a star chamber would effectively bury the real story regarding the management of l’Affaire Rupnik, botched from the very start.

Fernandez, for his part, appeared in the interview published Thursday to acknowledge the persistence of those dangers.

“In cases like this,” Fernandez said, “it is important to find the most suitable people, and for them to accept.”

Whether Fernandez meant DDF is having some trouble finding people willing to take on the work, or whether DDF is at some pains to find people capable of undertaking the task and seeing it to completion, is something that could use some clarification. Those are not mutually exclusive options, in any case.

In other words, the statement did not quite acknowledge in words that the Rupnik case is more than a hot potato—thoroughly politicized and iridescent if not radioactive—but it is about as close to a frank acknowledgment as one is like to get from any top-tier Vatican official.

Just (not) asking questions

While it is reasonable to wonder what is taking so long—the case has been before the public for well over two years and has been in the works for more than five years, and CDF/DDF already had much of the evidence—there are other questions raised by the interview.

DDF is responsible, through a specially dedicated Discipline Section, for investigating and prosecuting the most serious crimes clerics can commit. It happens that Francis has directed Fernandez to steer well clear of the Discipline Section’s work.

When he came to the top job at DDF in 2023, Fernández did not exactly bring with him a stellar record on abuse and coverup. In fact, he admitted mistakes and tried to beg off the appointment on grounds he was a bad fit for the task of managing the disciplinary side of things.

Francis wanted Fernandez in the job, however, so Francis told Fernandez to leave Discipline alone.

“[A] specific Section [in DDF] has recently been created with very competent professionals,” Francis wrote to Fernandez in a private letter made public around the time of Fernandez’s appointment. “I ask you as prefect to dedicate your personal commitment more directly to the main purpose of the Dicastery, which is ‘keeping the faith’,” Francis wrote.

In an exclusive interview with Crux in July 2023, Fernandez said the decision to let him leave Discipline to the professionals “[shows] his confidence in those who know [best in these matters] so that they continue on the right path, which little by little is being consolidated.”

So, not to put too fine a point on it: Why was Fernandez discussing the business at all?

A fair excuse for Fernandez would be to say that Alfa y Omega asked, and he answered, but Fernandez’s answers—such as they were—raise other questions, too.

Asked point-blank whether there is an urgent need to resolve the Rupnik case, Fernandez said he has heard of worse. “In fact,” Fernandez replied, “I am thinking of many other cases, and some perhaps more serious [than Rupnik’s] but less publicized.”

The obvious follow-up question to Fernandez’s “other cases” remark should have been: “Well, which ones? What of them?” One hopes every reporter on the Vatican beat is calling Fernandez non-stop with just those questions, but such and similar considerations are for another time.

Dangerous commonplaces

Fernandez’s claim is not lacking in verisimilitude, as anyone who has covered this beat for any length of time will tell you, sordid and appalling as the Rupnik business certainly is. Fernandez’s “other cases” remark was also at least a nod in the general direction of a perniciously persistent attitude found throughout the echelons of Roman leadership.

“We’re not talking about the abuse of minors,” quipped the comms dicastery’s prefect, Dr. Paolo Ruffini, in remarks he made on the Rupnik case to a roomful of journalists early last summer.

Before the clerical abuse of minors erupted into a worldwide scandal starting more than twenty years ago, churchmen dealt with abuse cases quietly. They developed a vocabulary and a shorthand for discussing problem cases, working to a specific modus operandi that involved, among other things, moving clerics from one assignment to another and sometimes from one diocese to another.

Rarely did Church leaders ask hard questions when it came to the game of shuffling. Hard decisions were even more rare than hard questions. With rare and notable exception, churchmen high and low protected the bad actors—men who were ruining lives and souls—perhaps on the belief they were protecting the institution they served and protested to love.

Survivors of such abuse—perpetrated on victims who were already adults—have given courageous account of modes and practices shockingly similar to those, which were run-of-the-mill in the gruesome old days.

As Crux’s managing editor, Charles Collins put it in an analysis piece from July 2018—in the wake of the first official McCarrick revelations—the abuse of adults and the abuse of minors are more closely related than senior churchmen are willing to admit.

“If the Church hierarchy continues to turn a blind eye to sexual misconduct involving adults,” Collins wrote, “it will never be able to put an end to the sexual abuse of minors.”

In the years since Crux published Collins’ analysis, the facts have borne him out.

Driven to distraction

Fernandez’s “other cases” remark was also a distraction.

Right before Alfa y Omega asked Fernandez about the Rupnik case directly and specifically, the Madrid archdiocesan weekly asked the DDF prefect: “How can we protect the rights of accused persons, avoiding unfair trials or misunderstandings in this area?”

“This issue, like any other, can be used to take revenge on someone,” Fernandez said. “It is also possible to assume intentions that do not exist,” Fernandez said, “or a very sensitive person, in a difficult moment of his or her life, can misinterpret something that was not really so or was not true to that extent.”

Fernandez isn’t wrong.

“[A]n adequate canonical process protects everyone,” Fernandez also said, “the alleged victims and the alleged criminal.”

“It is enough to take care of the guarantees provided by law,” Fernandez continued.

Assuring a fair trial for Rupnik at this point would be a tall order for an unimpeachable justice system with so many Mores at the bar and Solomon himself on the bench. That is not an apt description of ecclesiastical justice in its current condition.