Manipulation, imposed relationships, omerta of the Church: two ex-nuns testified on Wednesday to the sexual and psychological violence carried out by an influential Slovenian priest and artist in the early 1990s, a new stage in this media file which splashes the Vatican.
The two women spoke at length about being under the influence of Marko Rupnik, a world-renowned theologian and mosaicist whose works are visible in Lourdes, Fatima and Washington, and called for a start in the fight against abuse of power.
Now aged 69, the ex-Jesuit is accused of having committed sexual and psychological violence on at least twenty women for nearly 30 years, particularly within the community he led in Ljubljana, now dissolved.
“He said that I would not grow spiritually if I did not meet his sexual needs
,” Gloria Branciani, a member of this community until his departure in 1994, told a press conference in Rome. Among his methods, Father Rupnik invoked the Trinity to force the nuns to have three-way sexual relations with him, she reported, denouncing a
“moral, spiritual and psychological”
influence .
The Jesuit Order, the one from which Pope Francis comes, excluded Marko Rupnik in June 2023. The Vatican had invoked the statute of limitations to close the case in 2022 without a canonical investigation, Father Rupnik only receiving restrictions imposed by the Society of Jesus in its ministry.
A brief excommunication in 2020
But in 2023, the pope lifted this requirement to allow the disciplinary procedure to proceed.
Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the American NGO Bishop Accountability which documents the global crisis of violence in the Church, described Rupnik as a
“powerful cleric who was protected at the highest levels of the Church and the Vatican”
.
This press conference comes five years after an important summit at the Vatican on sexual violence in the Church, at the end of which the Pope promised a policy of
“zero tolerance”
.
However,
“the Rupnik case shows that little has changed
,” lamented Anne Barrett Doyle, calling for an independent and transparent investigation.
Despite the probable statute of limitations on the facts, Me Laura Sgrò, lawyer for the victims, indicated that she was
“studying the possibilities of recourse”
in court.
Accused in another case of having had sexual relations with a woman and then giving her absolution, Marko Rupnik was briefly excommunicated - excluded from the Christian community - in 2020 by the Vatican, the highest sanction possible, however immediately lifted because he had admitted the facts and had formally repented.