A famous priest-artist who was thrown out of the Jesuits after being accused of sexual, spiritual and psychological abuse of girls has been accepted right into a diocese in his native Slovenia, the newest twist in a case that has implicated the pope and laid bare the bounds of the Vatican’s in-house legal system..
The Jesuits said Thursday they’d provided the diocese of Koper, Slovenia an “extensive letter” outlining the allegations against the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik and spot that he had been convicted and excommunicated for committing some of the serious crimes within the Catholic Church.
But the Koper diocese said it accepted Rupnik as a diocesan priest in August since it hadn’t received any documentation showing that he had “been found guilty of the alleged abuses before either an ecclesiastical tribunal or civil court.”
A press release from the diocese to The Associated Press cited the Universal Declaration on Human Rights’ provision on the presumption of innocence and right to a defense for anyone accused of against the law.
Rupnik, whose mosaics decorate churches and basilicas across the globe, was declared excommunicated by the Vatican in May 2020 for a confession-related crime. The Jesuit order kicked him out this summer after several adult women accused him of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuses dating back 30 years.
The scandal has been a headache for the Vatican and Pope Francis himself because of suspicions Rupnik received favorable treatment from the Holy See since Francis is a Jesuit and other Jesuits head the sex crimes office that investigated the priest and declined to prosecute him for abuse.
After conducting their very own investigation, the Jesuit order announced in June that it found the ladies’s claims to be “very highly credible.” But they said the Vatican’s canonical norms in force on the time of the alleged abuse precluded harsher punishment for old cases involving the abuse of adults.
On Thursday, Rupnik’s former Jesuit superior, the Rev. Johan Verschueren, confirmed he had communicated with the bishop of Koper, Monsignor Jurij Bizjak, after learning earlier this 12 months that Bizjak was prepared to take Rupnik in.
“I immediately wrote an exhaustive letter to the bishop in regards to the situation and the various complaints or cases we were coping with, and I asked him whether he would maintain his offer after having been informed by it,” Verschueren said in an email to The Associated Press.
The Jesuits learned later from the Vatican that the transfer had undergone, he said.
Verschueren said his letter included a reference to the lone canonical sanction Runik incurred after a guilty verdict: a 2020 excommunication for having used the confessional to absolve a girl with whom he had engaged in sexual intercourse. The Vatican lifted the excommunication decree two weeks later.
The Catholic Church has long responded to women who report priests for abusing their authority by blaming the ladies for seducing the churchmen, portraying them as mentally unstable or minimizing the event as a mere “mistake” or “boundary violation” by an otherwise holy priest.
The Jesuits said they’d kicked Rupnik out not due to the abuse claims, but due to his “stubborn refusal to look at the vow of obedience.” The Jesuits had exhorted Rupnik to atone for his misconduct and enter right into a technique of reparation along with his victims, but he refused.
While Francis’ role within the Rupnik scandal has come into query, the pontiff insisted in a Jan. 24 interview with the AP that he had only intervened procedurally within the case, though he also said he opposed waiving the statute of limitations for old abuse cases involving adults.
More recently, Francis was seen as being a part of an apparent attempt by Rupnik’s supporters to rehabilitate the priest’s image. In a widely publicized audience, Francis received an in depth collaborator and powerful defender of Rupnik’s who has denounced what she called a media “lynching” of him.
In a press release last month, the Vicariate of Rome, which Francis heads, solid doubt on the Vatican’s lone punishment of Rupnik – the 2020 declaration of excommunication. Women who alleged they were abused by Rupnik said the statement revictimized them.
Usually, when a priest moves from one diocese to a different, or joins a diocese after leaving a non secular order, the method takes years. According to canon law, it also requires “appropriate testimonials … in regards to the cleric’s life, morals, and studies,” from the priest’s previous superior.
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AP author Ali Zerdin contributed from Ljubljana, Slovenia.
