The Rupnik Case Farce

The Vatican Press Office’s denial of Father Rupnik’s acquittal, accused of sexually abusing at least twenty nuns, raises new questions. No one doubts that Father Rupnik, a former Jesuit, has a protection system that may be manipulating a trial about which nothing is known. A statement from the Holy See Press Office categorically denied the news published by the blog MessainLatino.it that Father Marko Rupnik had been acquitted in the criminal trial being held in the Vatican, but it at least had the merit of shedding some light on a process that, at this point, smells like a farce.

A case that has never stopped raising suspicions

The famous priest, expelled from the Society of Jesus in 2023, is accused of sexual, spiritual, and psychological abuse against at least twenty religious sisters during the 1980s and 1990s. These accusations were deemed credible by the then auxiliary bishop of Rome, Daniele Libanori, also a Jesuit, who launched an investigation into the complaints against Rupnik. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith archived the case in October 2022 because the crime had expired. It later emerged that in 2020 the same Congregation had excommunicated Father Rupnik for absolving an accomplice in confession, an excommunication that Pope Francis immediately revoked.

In October 2023, Pope Francis himself was forced, following the victims’ testimonies and under pressure from the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, chaired by Cardinal Sean Patrick O’Malley, to lift the statute of limitations and ask the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, now in the hands of the «faithful» Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández, to organize the trial.

Three years of delays and opacity

Almost three years have passed and the only thing we have seen so far is the continuation of a system of protection and cover-up of Father Rupnik at the highest level, a situation that was almost a fact during the pontificate of Pope Francis, but which now increasingly tarnishes that of Leo XIV.

The Vatican Press Office offers an official version according to which «reports of any deliberation by the judges following the case of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik are completely unfounded: the evaluation of the case is still ongoing and the court is examining the documentation from the dioceses involved, from the Jesuits, from the interested parties and from the press.» This explanation raises new questions and gives the impression of prolonging the delaying tactics seen so far, in the hope that, with the passage of time, attention will diminish and Father Rupnik will emerge unscathed.

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