Waiving the statute of limitations makes matters worse in Rupnik affair

There will be time for a cold and surgically precise reconstruction of what we know about the whole sordid Rupnik affair – it will be a long read and gruesome – but for now, let me say that Pope Francis’s decision to waive the statute of limitations on unspecified charges against his depraved olim confrére has made things worse, not better.

It paves the way not for real justice, but for a show trial at best and a star chamber at worst, either of which would serve further to obfuscate the truth regarding not only the full extent of Rupnik’s monstrous misdeeds, but also the truth regarding the management of Rupnik’s case.

Implausibly timed and preposterously explained, Friday’s announcement only gives further confirmation – were any needed – that Responsibility, Accountability, Transparency are – as I said on Thursday, mere hours before the latest news broke – transparently cynical bromides. The act of raw power shows that rule of law in the Church is a farce.

“In September,” the Friday statement from the Vatican press office read, “the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors brought to the Pope’s attention that there were serious problems in the handling of the Fr. Marko Rupnik case and lack of outreach to victims.”

It is possible that the Pontifical Commission for the Protection for Minors – a notoriously toothless, dysfunctional office that Francis created early in his pontificate as a stand-alone outfit and then folded it into the curia – did speak with Francis about l’Affaire Rupnik in September. On October 8^th, however, the Commission was still sending out preliminary email feelers to Rupnik’s victims. By all appearances, the Commission – styling itself in correspondence as the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons – was only just beginning its review in the middle of this month.

In any case, it is risible to claim that Pope Francis only learned of problems with the handling of the Rupnik business in September of this year.

The case has dominated headlines in both the Catholic and the mainstream secular media for ten months. Francis’s own cardinal vicar for the Rome diocese sent a report citing irregularities – albeit of a different sort – over the summer. Francis had known about the case before it reached the press and stayed on front pages for the better part of a year.

Pope Francis gave an in-depth interview to the Associated Press in January, in which he discussed l’Affaire Rupnik at length. It was in the January interview with AP, in fact, that Pope Francis first offered his frankly implausible rationale for not lifting the statute of limitations when Rupnik’s case was with the Vatican’s ordinary organs of justice.

Statutes of limitations are designed to protect the integrity of a legal system. They exist alongside other guarantees, also designed to ensure that the accused receive justice through due process. The Vatican’s system countenances the waiving of statutes of limitations when the crime alleged is sufficiently grave and the circumstances allow for the accused to receive a fair trial.

In Rupnik’s case, there was mountainous evidence already collected and ample opportunity for defense counsel to confront witnesses. There was, in short, no plausible reason for not waiving the statute of limitations. When the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith ruled – in October of 2022 – that the charges against Rupnik were statute-barred, Francis did nothing.

“Consequently,” the Friday statement from the press office continued – i.e., after Francis heard from the PCPM last month, “the Holy Father asked the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith to review the case, and decided to lift the statute of limitations to allow a process to take place.” Not even the closest parsing, by the most careful lawyer, could save that construction from a charge of mendacity.

“The Pope is firmly convinced,” the Friday statement went on to say, “that if there is one thing the Church must learn from the Synod,” i.e. the gathering of bishops and other special invitees that has been underway for three weeks in Rome, “it is to listen attentively and compassionately to those who are suffering, especially those who feel marginalized from the Church.”

On Wednesday of this week, however, Cardinal Robert Prevost OSB – the head of the Vatican department that oversees bishops and helps the pope pick new ones – told journalists that abuse and coverup in the Church “[were] not meant to be the central topic of the synod,” and have not been major topics of discussion during the three weeks of discussions.

Prevost said abuse and coverup are “an ongoing topic in many countries around the world, many parts of the Church, and it will have to continue to be that, but it has to be kept in the proper perspective, because the whole life of the Church does not revolve around that specific issue, as important as it is.” As veteran Church-watcher Elizabeth Scalia archly and accurately quipped, saying “as important as it is,” in the same breath with which you say it didn’t come up much, is saying that isn’t important enough.

Pope Francis has one chance to salvage something akin to hope for the recovery of the Church’s institutional and cultural capacity to provide justice, upon which her credibility chiefly depends. Pope Francis must see to it that Fr. Marko Rupnik gets a fair public trial – meaningfully public – and that a complete account of the whole Rupnik affair be prepared and published with all deliberate speed.

How Pope Francis may do that is a question deserving separate treatment.

When it comes to the question of whether Pope Francis will try to do it at all, only time will tell. Time is the one thing of which Francis has precious little.

Reporters on the sidelines of the October 2018 youth synod in Rome asked Archbishop Charles Scicluna of Malta – the Church’s leading sex crimes investigator – what the faithful ought to do in the face of myriad causes to doubt Francis’s resolve.

“Give him time,” urged Scicluna.

Pope Francis has had it.