ROME – In response to a complaint from his own anti-abuse panel about “serious problems” in the handling of a case involving a prominent Slovenian artist and priest, Pope Francis has decided to lift the statute of limitations in church law which, up to this point, had barred a canonical prosecution.
The Vatican made the announcement in a brief statement Friday, roughly 48 hours after news broke that Fr Mark Rupnik had been accepted back into his home diocese in Slovenia as a priest in good standing. The 68-year-old cleric and artist had been expelled from the Jesuit order in June, after an internal investigation found a high degree of credibility to charges of sexual and other forms of abuse against adult women.
