A disgraced former Jesuit accused of heinous sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse allegedly perpetrated against well more than a dozen victims – most of them women religious – over some three decades, Fr. Marko Rupnik, is now a priest of Koper diocese in his native Slovenia.
Koper’s vicar general told The Pillar that Bishop Bishop Jurij Bizjak agreed to give Rupnik a chance since “Rupnik had not been sentenced to any judicial sentence.”
Rupnik has never been tried for his alleged crimes of abuse. That is because the Vatican department responsible for investigating and prosecuting the crimes of which Rupnik stands accused decided not to waive the statute of limitations so that the accused could stand trial.
A secret Vatican tribunal did find Rupnik guilty, in 2020, of “absolving an accomplice in a sin against the Sixth Commandment” – that’s technical Church jargon for granting absolution to someone with whom the absolving cleric had some sort of illicit sexual liaison – and ratified the excommunication Rupnik incurred when he committed that crime, but the excommunication was lifted almost as soon as it was imposed.
Why that case proceeded to trial and a guilty verdict, while the others did not, remains a mystery.
There is mountainous evidence against Rupnik, much of it collected by the Jesuits themselves, who made a belated but apparently sincere and diligent attempt to bring him to justice between 2019 and 2022. There would be ample opportunity for the accused to confront the numerous witnesses who have come forward – “highly credible” witnesses, to hear the Jesuits tell it – but Rome nevertheless decided not to do justice upon him.
“Father Marko [Rupnik] asked me to have threesomes with another sister of the community,” one victim-accuser recounted to Italy’s Domani, “because sexuality had to be, in his opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, [Fr Marko Rupnik] said, ‘the third person would welcome the relationship between the two’.”
The Pillar translated and published the entire gruesome interview, with Domani’s permission. It paints an unspeakably horrible picture of diabolical manipulation, in which Rupnik worked to a specific modus operandi, warping the mind of his naïve mark and exploiting her insecurities.
The Slovenian bishops – including Bizjak – evidently believe the allegations against Rupnik. Bizjak was among the bishops who signed a 22 December 2022 statement decrying Rupnik’s “unacceptable and reprehensible actions,” and calling on any of Rupnik’s victims who had not yet spoken to contact Church authorities, “so that the truth and a just verdict can be reached as comprehensively as possible.”
To consider incardinating this man is sheer lunacy. It bespeaks moral turpitude. To do the thing is no mere dereliction of duty, but an act of naked disdain for the bodies and souls of everyone Rupnik may touch, an act that scorns Rupnik’s victims and ridicules victims everywhere.
It is craven. It is supine. It is madness.
The specifics of Pope Francis’s direct involvement in l’Affaire Rupnik remain unclear, but he admitted to some direct involvement at one stage, even as he insisted he did not meddle in the case. “I had nothing to do with this,” Francis told Nicole Winfield of the Associated Press in January of this year. Francis also told AP he “always” waives the statute of limitations when victims are either minors or vulnerable adults, but usually doesn’t waive the statute of limitations in other cases.
How anyone in anything remotely analogous to the spiritual care of a diabolically perverted and sadistic cleric shouldn’t be considered vulnerable beggars the most macabre and callous fancy, but that is another matter.
All Pope Francis had to do in order to make sure Rupnik didn’t see justice was … nothing.
“[T]his is very sad and scandalous,” Pope Francis on Wednesday told the participants in the synod on synodality. Only, Pope Francis wasn’t talking about Rupnik. Pope Francis was talking about “the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats or albs and lace-covered robes.”
As soon as the Rupnik story broke, it was clear that the business was very bad. By September of this year, it was evident that the Rupnik business would stain and possibly define Pope Francis’s legacy. This development is catastrophic beyond human reckoning. L’Affaire Rupnik at once eclipses and encapsulates everything awful in l’Affaire Barros, l’Affaire Inzoli, l’Affaire Zanchetta, l’Affaire Danneels, l’Affaire Ricard.
Rupnik has already done prodigious harm to his victims, in body and soul. Now, Bishop Jurij Bizjak of Koper has given Rupnik wherewithal to do even more. Pope Francis has enabled them both. The example Pope Francis has set for bishops the world over cannot but enable the negligent and encourage the wicked, even as it emboldens the depraved.
The farcical management of the Rupnik business gives unequivocable and incontrovertible proof of the nature and extent of the rot in both the hierarchical leadership culture and the organization of power in the Church. Here is contempt for victims, for the faithful, for truth and justice, for decency, for common sense.
It is impossible to absolve Pope Francis of ultimate responsibility for it. Whether by act or omission, he is the author of it.
Even if Pope Francis were by some raw exercise of power tomorrow to intervene and stop this utter insanity, his act would come late and merely confirm that Responsibility, Accountability, Transparency are transparently cynical bromides and rule of law in the Church a feeble imposture, a clumsy counterfeit, an unqualified sham.
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By its rancid fruits shall this foul papacy be known.
Pope Francis is Synodaling while Rome burns.
“ You will know them by their fruits.” Matthew 7:16
Remember this? 06.03.2020 At 9.00 this morning, in the Clementine Hall of the Vatican Apostolic Palace, Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, S.J., director of the Aletti Centre, held the first Sermon of Lent, entitled “Taking the axe to the root”.
“ Even now the axe is laid to the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.” Matthew 3:10
IL Capo di tutti Capi has made his decision. Deal with it you struggling pew sitters.
We read: “Father Marko [Rupnik] asked me to have threesomes with another sister of the community […] because sexuality had to be, in his opinion, free from possession, in the image of the Trinity where, [Fr Marko Rupnik] said, ‘the third person would welcome the relationship between the two’.”
Wondering, here, what the difference is, if any, between this “third person” thing and now priests enabled by some German bishops to bless couplings active in the homosexual lifestyle? And, further, what the maneuvered role of a groomed synodal majority might be, IF they do the same?
Very artful! It would be not only about square-circle theology and inverted-pyramid ecclesiology, but fractals!—where the “self-similar” and concrete details and the equally-concrete whole picture replicate each other forever (the “endless journey”!). Each contained within the other.
It’s almost as if reality (and the Ultimate Reality) actually manifests hierarchy, as in the balanced “hierarchical communion” (Lumen Gentium) when compared to, say, the kitchen-blender voting of the “forwardist” Tennis Court Oath in 1789. And, as if the indwelling Holy Spirit cannot be quarantined by “the signs of the times” from indissoluble unity with the Father, and with the historical Incarnation of the Son concretely (!) entering human history as Jesus the Christ—the source and cornerstone of the distinctively unique Apostolic Succession.
Jesus Christ mentioned only a handful of times, maybe six, in the Instrumentum Laboris, while the undefined “synod” and “synodality” echo throughout, some 382 times.
That’s quite the pile of words there. I’d probably just say the Rupnik affair lays to rest any doubt about Francis’s suitability to lead anything other than a wolf-pack. But that’s just me using words to clearly communicate a thought.
I love your brevity and clarity. And I agree completely.
And meanwhile…. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2023/10/25/catholic-bishop-kaszak-resigns-poland-gay-orgy-scandal/?li_source=LI&li_medium=liftigniter-rhr
Facing the reality about the Pontiff Francis, faithful and candid observers can see that, in the distillation of the Rupnik sex abuser protection case, indicating that the Pontiff Francis is the man protecting Rupnik, this final case is consistent with the long pattern of sex abuser protection all pointing to the behavior of the Pontiff Francis, including the accounts of his underhanded and appalling multimillion dollar legal defense of his friend “Rev.” Julio Grassi of Argentina, sentenced to 15 years in prison by the Argentine high court, for raping orphan boys in his “charity” operation. Cardinal Bergoglio was accused by a judge in Argentine high court of secretly delivering a voluminous legal brief attacking the motives of the victims and accusers, as a back-room maneuver outside of the court proceedings, expecting to sway the court in favor of Grassi. An Argentine journalist confronted the Pontiff Francis on video at the Vatican about this just a few years ago, and the Pontiff Francis denied it. Among the sources, the account was written in the book “The Dictator Pope” by Sir Henry Sire of the Knights of Malta.
In between the Grassi case in Argentina and the Rupnik case in Italy, both involving the Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio / Pontiff Francis, we have the Pontiff Francis’ protection and rehabilitation of the following sex abusers and sex abuse coverup artists: 2013 rehabilitation of abuse coverup Cardinal Danneels (his papal election supporter of Belgium); 2013 rehabilitation of sex abuser Cardinal McCormick (his papal electioneer from USA); rehabilitation of the convicted sex abuser “Rev.” Mauro Inzolli, subsequent defense of sex abuse coverup Bishop Barros of Chile (and smearing the faithful of Osorno who protested against Barros); subsequent protection of sex abuser Bishop Zanchetta of Argentina. I suppose this list might be missing some orher notable cases involving the Pontiff Francis.
A faithful and candid person can still find and watch the video of the (bow known) sex abuser Cardinal McCarrick at Villanova, shortly after his trip to Rome for the 2013 conclave, grooming his audience, demonstrating his supreme expertise in the art of manipulation, and recounting for them with his sinister charm, about the key role that he played in “talking up” Jorge Bergoglio to be elected pontiff. McCarrick tells all that “no one was talking about Bergoglio,” and then suddenly “a very influential man” intervened to recommend, and McCarrick himself “encouraged” the elector Cardinals (McCarrick was past 80 and could not vote himself), to “talk him up.” It was all tantamount to a miraculous unfolding, the audience is given to understand. Of course, McCarrick failed to fully inform his audience that in the prior 2005 conclave, it was in fact Bergoglio who was “runnerup” to Ratzinger. Runnerup because the same Jorge Bergoglio was the 2005 candidate for the same coverup and abuse Cardinals Danneels and McCarrick. They (the abusers and coverup Cardinals) got what they wanted on the 2nd try.
So here the Church finds itself, with a Pontiff continuing to thwart justice and protect sex abusers and coverup artists, while leading members of his farcical “abuse commission” publicly resign, one after another, because they see that no justice will be done under the Pontiff Francis.
No justice…
Recalling the political ideology of the dictator Juan Peron of Argentina: “For my friends: everything. For my enemies: not even justice.”
We have all been taught that history shows that there have been evil Bishops and Popes.
The Pontiff Francis shows that such evil and injustice is not simply a relic of the past, but a continuing saga, being played out by manipulative men, right now, right in front of our eyes.
And now, to put a bow on the whole package, the same men have teed up a phony synod in which they now publicly feel confident to declare that they are free to “set aside” the commands of Jesus and the apostolic revelation of the Holy Spirit, about: sexual morality.
They intend, with their fraudulent, manipulative synod, to do as Fr. Imbelli observed: to decapitate the Body of Christ.
It is pure unadulterated narcissism for Francis. It is worse than if it were being indifferent to the evil of sex abuse, which I believe he does find abhorrent. He has a megalomaniacal exhibitionistic desire to prove to the whole Catholic world that he is the Emperor of forgiveness even when such forgiveness requires a level of requisite blindness towards the consequences of evil in proportions that make his gestures farcical and damaging to all concerned, including the honor of God.
Chris, your comments upon this incredibly horrific situation w/Rupnik are so unbelievably spot on that I’m almost reduced to incoherence. But I will recover. You’ve obviously been following the many machinations of this most BOGUS of Pontiffs, Bergoglio, for a very long time. And you know so well how so many stories about him are just piling up, ready to be perused; because Bergoglio himself is such a maniac that,IMHO, DEPOSITION may be the only remedy we’ll have to stop this clown train of ecclesiastics being appointed to high positions in the Vatican. (You’ve already named some of them.) So, all in all, a fabulous job and I SALUTE you God bless & maybe the Catholic tides are turning–RTR
Oct. 30, 2023: I honestly do not understand why some Sisters – mature, grown women – submitted to Rupnik. It has not been said that he forced anyone – did the Superiors know about this? Why then did they not put a stop to it? It’s all so very sad.
Interesting that you call the current occupier of Peter’s Chair “Pontiff Francis.” For years I’ve found it difficult to use the words “Pope” and “Francis” consecutively in the same sentence. I’m not suggesting he isn’t the pope, but information such as that contained in this article exacerbates my difficulty,
Chris, I always enjoy your articles, because they are spot on. In the Church there is the concept of group thinking. No one wants to tell the emperor, in your case the Pope that he is naked. Everyone praises him for the beautiful clothes he is wearing. It is group thinking that brought the suffering of the Church in regards to the sexual scandals. And for most of the times, group thinking continues. This needs to stop so that the lay people, part of the Church can trust the leadership in the Church. Fr.Carlos
The author might have saved himself a lot of ink by simply saying that the entire Rupnik affair is “Bergoglian” in nature. In the future, that will be the term to describe ecclesiastical corruption, moral scandal, bald-face lying, sanctimonious rationalizing, and totalitarian cruelty.
“The Rupnik affair goes from scandalous to contemptible” … to Bergoglian. Spot on.
“[T]his is very sad and scandalous,” Pope Francis on Wednesday told the participants in the synod on synodality. Only, Pope Francis wasn’t talking about Rupnik. Pope Francis was talking about “the scandal of young priests trying on cassocks and hats or albs and lace-covered robes.” In more precise terms: OUR MODERNISM IS BEING REJECTED . . . thanks be to God!
Is the story about him kinda chiding the altar boys holding their hands in reverence true?
There is a video showing him pulling an altar boys hand apart…I’ll post it for you.
Here’s just one video documenting it, nearer the end…
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2QgP0YaOLT4
This mans enemy is not sin or the devil; it seems to be the Catholic Church itself.
Yes. The last sentence hits hard with a crushing sadness. The last sentence lamentably characterizes the truth of this regime in this particular case as in its general 10+ year reign. That the effects of evil do not confine themselves to proximate and contextual historical frames should lead us all to our knees.
Have mercy on us, O Lord. Spare us, O Lord, from the evil one and his dominions.
Since the pope is the “Supreme Authority” of the Church, “the buck stops” before his cathedra. The.pope, in letting this incardination happen is not only complicit but has given his full assent.
Fr. Khouri, are you a Maronite?
We simply have an evil Pope that protects, aids and abets paedophiles and all manner of perverts.
The depraved are given power. The woman who gave the harrowing testimony of her descent into hell was hauled there by Rupnick and left there by Francis.
The diabolical is very clearly reigning in the Vatican.
I would like to think that Bergoglio would be concerned that Rupnick would turn out to be a repeat offender. But that would assume that Bergoglio is mentally well-balanced.
Among the things that disturbs me the most in this entire sordid episode, and the others linked in the article, is this: I get so fatigued with all of them that I’m starting to lose my capacity to be shocked and disgusted. Of course, shock and disgust should be neither my first instinct nor concern. Prayer, fasting and spiritual reparation for these abominations should always be first recourse in such situations. I’m working on that. But my goodness, it’s really, really hard.
Didn’t know the meaning of the term “incardinated” until the news of this monumentally disgraceful development. A stain on the priesthood and an embarrassing burden for all good, faithful priests.
In my opinion this guy should be “incardinated” into a prison cell with Harvey Weinstein.
Just when we may have hoped that we had hit bottom with the synodaling institutional church….
Thank you Chris for this excellent article. I’m so sick of others ‘pussy-footing’ around the obvious, thus enabling more of the same. I research clergy sexual abuse of adults and am just so fed up now with this defense of the perpetrator and further victimization of the offended against. People are saying Rupnik is innocent until proven guilty. Well, how can one even try to prove guilt if his going ‘on trial’ has been dismissed? And the church wonders why it’s become a ‘target’ of ridicule’ which it then seeks to deflect by ‘modernizing’ especially by accepting the gospel of Kinsey and the like. It’s not going to work except for the people who want it and think the rest are just puritans without a brain. Well, as someone once said about Vatican II (and I’m now referring to the synod on synodality): ‘He who gets the ball rolling has the unique power to decide which way it rolls and who gets squashed along the way by it’. If only people could speak to the victims and hear their stories you would soon clearly realise that if you, for example, just shed the fact that Rupnik is a priest and a famous artist, all you’d be left with are dirty old men who have developed a context and modus operadi for seducing far less powerful and mostly somewhat naive women – that’s all. Anyone interested in my own research can go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n_3NiWxbqo and here https://eprints.qut.edu.au/view/person/de_Weger,_Stephen.html
Well said, Dr Stephen de Weger.
The foulness of priests who commit such abuses and the complicit foulness of the pope who minimizes the suffering of the victims & scandalizes every decent person with this parody of justice in The Catholic Church. This is CLERICALISM at its worst! Yet hypocritically Pope Francis trumpets his detest for clericalism.
Would the long prophesized ‘Man of Lies’ be worse than this?
“For he is a slave to whatever has mastered him.’ 2 Peter 2:19
As Christopher R. Altieri makes plain, the current incumbent of The Chair of Peter is a serial offender against the need of open justice for those abused by his confrères.
At heart, is it not difficult to avoid the conclusion that the current pope is a cynic with an inner contempt for God, for justice, & for the little ones of Christ?
Could we say that Francis is the first ‘Professional Spin Merchant’ pope?
Always in the love of King Jesus Christ; blessings from marty
You are 100% right, Marty, this is clericalism, and at its most cynical. But now I read the following:
“That’s all changed this morning, with the Holy See press office putting out a brief statement saying that Pope Francis has now waived the statute of limitations, allowing the DDF to press ahead with Rupnik’s prosecution”.
Well, well, well, I wonder why he changed his mind? I wish I could believe it was because he really sincerely believed that this was the right thing to do, rather than that he bowed to (our and other’s) ‘pressure’ to do so. His decision suddenly smells of insincerity. My involvement in the whole abuse of adults has made me not so much cynical, although that is true, but painfully aware of the way things work amongst the clericalist clergy who are so embedded in their self-protecting and deeply en-bubbled and forever adolescent perceptions of their sexual promiscuity and acts being a mere sin of the flesh. It is never ‘mere’, it deeply harms the other. These nuns have been DEEPLY harmed. The Catholic Church has been DEEPLY harmed by these adolescents in clerical garb, and sorry, but I now see Francis as one of them – in the end he is just a man with a personal development history, like all of us, capable of having been seduced by ideology even without realising it. Lowering the bar of clergy sexual activity expectations to fit the groove of society, to mere (expectable) sins of the flesh, (and never genuinely believing the victims thereof as to the harm it causes and their NOT truly consenting in any psychologically mature sense of the word, does not fix the church’s sex problems or cure the harm it does – it makes it far worse. And who does such an approach favour the most? Men, and in this case, the ‘celibates???’ of the church. SO much as to change at so many levels: the psychological individual level (the apples), the sociological collective (the apple barrel) and the magisterial (often agendaed) (the material the barrel is made from) levels.
One more thing: compassion for (alleged) abusers can only be acceptable after compassion and reparation of those they have (allegedly) abused and that compassion must be expressed i equal believeability of the victims, listening to them, and NOT ignoring their requests to be heard. Compassion for the abuser and not the abused is revolting, even if one has problems believing in the possibilities that the abuse actually occurred. To accept the possibilities of such horrors occurring amongst the representative fo Christ and their church, is a bridge too far for many, but it is a bridge they MUST cross in order to grow.
Your lnks are not working. Don’t open up.
Is it a Jesuit thing? A loyalty to the Order? It makes me wonder…
He knows the truth. All of the affirmation in the world won’t change that. Maybe we should pray for him.
I am not inclined to give the Jesuits the benefit of the doubt the author does. They could have also sought Rupnik’s laicization, which would have made this move moot. The truth is they could pretend they handled the problem while leaving Rupnik to continue things as a priest, just not as a Jesuit. How jesuitical! He was expelled for disobedience: that’s actually rich from a Society for which obedience to doctrine has been as flexible as Rupnik’s “spiritual theology.”
I am so saddened by the continuing protection of the most egregious offenses by members of the cloth. As a come back to home Catholic who seeks the solace of the faith, it is so hard to defend the present Pope. He seems on so many fronts to be a destroyer of the reasons for being Catholic. It is sickening!
By now it is an established fact that Bergoglio has a bent to protect and promote clerics who are heterodox and lack moral integrity. However, all of these previous sordid affairs pale in comparison to the Rupnik’s affair. Who else in the Church could have the power of lifting the excommunication of Rupnik, shielding him from all possible prosecutions and getting him incardinated (at the “speed of light”) despite all his heinous criminal activities? May it no possible that Rupnik held some very important secret(s) regarding Bergoglio such that the latter would be more than eager to protect him at all cost?. Could such secrets(s) be something regarding the validity of the papal election in 2013???
The Catholic Church is the Mystical Body of Christ, does it mean that the Mystical Body of Christ is its own enemy? Where is the logic in this?