For over three decades, the allegations of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse against Slovenian Father Marko Rupnik were met with cover-ups and bureaucratic delays.
In a message to a safeguarding conference in October 2025, Pope Leo XIV highlighted the need for safeguarding and transparency within the Catholic Church.
“I renew my appeal that there can be no tolerance for any form of abuse in the Church,” the pope said.
However, in the time since the allegations against Father Rupnik were revealed to the public during Pope Francis’ pontificate, the case has tested the Catholic Church’s commitment to transparency and tackling the institutional problems that allowed the Slovenian artist to continue his artistic public ministry for years relatively unscathed.
The revelations of the many allegations against Father Rupnik were made public in 2022. However, internal warnings and complaints about the Slovenian priest’s alleged psychological, spiritual and sexual abuses date as far back as the early 1990s.
Details of the abuses that occurred within the now-defunct Loyola Community — a women’s religious community co-founded in the early 1980s in Ljubljana, Slovenia, by Father Rupnik and Slovenian Sister Ivanka Hosta — were published by Left.it, an Italian blog.
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