The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith has received five new abuse complaints against the former Jesuit Fr Marko Rupnik. Source: The Tablet.
Laura Sgrò, a lawyer known for her role in a number of Vatican cases, presented the complaints to the DDF on April 3 to include in its investigation of Fr Rupnik opened in October last year after Pope Francis lifted the statute of limitations in his case.
There are now understood to be at least 20 complaints against Fr Rupnik.
Two of the new complainants, Miriam Kovac and Gloria Branciani, made public allegations against Fr Rupnik in a press conference alongside Ms Sgrò in February. They described his spiritual, psychological and, in Branciani’s case, sexual abuse perpetrated in the 1980s and 1990s, when they were sisters of the Loyola Community of which he was a founder.
Fr Rupnik was a distinguished artist and theologian until incidents of his alleged abuse became widely known in late 2022.
The Vatican’s handling of the scandal has drawn widespread criticism, renewed in recent weeks after the 2024 Annuario Pontificio directory listed him as a consultor to the Dicastery for Divine Worship.
His name also appeared on the dicastery’s website, and both still described him as a Jesuit, although the Society of Jesus expelled him last July for his “refusal to observe the vow of obedience” as it attempted to respond to the abuse allegations.
A dicastery official told LifesiteNews on April 18 that Fr Rupnik’s name had been included in the directory from previous editions in error. It has since been removed from the website.
Fr Rupnik’s had a considerable reputation as a liturgical artist, based at the Centro Aletti in Rome, and his work decorates many prominent Church sites including the Shrine of Lourdes, where a commission is due to report imminently on the future of his mosaics outside the basilica.
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More Rupnik abuse complaints submitted to DDF (By Patrick Hudson, The Tablet)
