Jesuits admit artist excommunicated before new abuse claims
ROME — 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.
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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.
