The Catholic bishop responsible for the world-famous and beloved Marian shrine in France has ordered measures to lower the visibility of mosaic artworks by Father Marko Rupnik at Lourdes, but has stopped short – for the time being – of ordering the removal of the art.
The artist priest Rupnik, 69, whose famed murals adorn chapels and cathedrals around the world, including inside the Vatican, is accused of sexually abusing at least 30 adult women, many of them nuns belonging to the Loyola Community he helped found in his native Slovenia in the 1980s. The allegations span several decades, much of which he spent in Rome at the Centro Aletti art institute he also founded in the early 1990s.
