The head of the Vatican’s communications department had defended his office’s continued use of art by Marko Rupnik, who is accused of multiple cases of sexual abuse and has been expelled from the Jesuits as a result.
Italian layman Paolo Ruffini, the Prefect of the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See, was drawn into offering his argument for why the art should remain in response to questions from journalists attending his keynote address at the annual Catholic Media Conference in the US city of Atlanta, Georgia, on 21 June.
“We did not put any new photos,” Ruffini said, “we just left what [images] there were. We didn’t decide what—what wasn’t in our charge to decide.”
Ex-Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik has been accused of abusing scores of victims—<a href="https://catholicherald.co.uk/former-nuns-in-rupnik-abuse-case-reveal-identities-while-calling-for-complete-transparency/"><mark style="background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)" class="has-inline-color has-vivid-cyan-blue-color">most of them female religious</mark></a>—over several decades, much of which he spent in Rome at the <em>Centro Aletti</em> art institute he founded in the early 1990s.
“We’re not talking about abuse of minors,” Ruffini told a room of roughly 150 journalists and other media professionals. “We are talking [about] a story that we don’t know. Who am I to judge the Rupnik stories?”
Jesuit investigators have said they found allegations that Rupnik spiritually, psychologically and sexually abused his victims to be “highly credible”, and the order expelled Rupnik last year after he refused to abide by restrictions his superiors placed on him.
The Vatican is currently investigating Rupnki after Pope Francis last October waived the usual statute of limitations in church law for prosecuting offenses against adults.
Rupnik’s alleged victims, along with other survivors of clerical sexual abuse and victim-advocates, have repeatedly called for the Vatican to stop using digital reproductions of Rupnik’s works and have criticised the Vatican both for the persistent use of Rupnik images and for the Vatican’s silence in the face of those requests.
Pope Francis himself has referred approvingly to Rupnik’s art on at least one specific occasion since the story broke in late 2022, and new Rupnik installations have continued to go up around the world.
After acknowledging the criminal process currently underway against Rupnik, Ruffini said: “We think—the dicastery—and I personally think that [removing the images] is not a good way to anticipate.”
“You know,” Ruffini is heard saying in an audio recording of his speech and question and answer session obtained by <em>Crux</em>, “as Christians, we are asked not to judge.”
Rupnik’s victims tried for years to get action from Rupnik’s Jesuit superiors, who reportedly first heard their complaints in the 1990s.
In 2019, Bishop Daniele Libanori, a Jesuit priest and auxiliary bishop in Rome who was investigating a religious congregation Rupnik had helped found in his native Slovenia, finally brought some of the abuse allegations to Church authorities in Rome
But the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith decided the statute of limitations had expired and declined to prosecute Rupnik. The Jesuits expelled Rupnik, who nevertheless remained a priest in good standing and shortly after his expulsion was incardinated in the Slovenian diocese of Koper, generating enormous controversy.
Under sustained media pressure and prodding from his own circle, Pope Francis reversed course—having previously stated his general reluctance to lift statute bars in cases involving adult victims—and decided to waive the statute of limitations, ordering a review of the whole Rupnik affair.
Details of the case against Rupnik and its handling emerged piecemeal over the course of many months, including a secret Vatican trial of Rupnik on charges he illicitly absolved an “accomplice” in a sin against the sixth commandment—technical legal jargon for his having had a sexual partner—which is a serious crime in Church law.
Victims of Rupnik have described how Rupnik would use his “creative” process as a tool of manipulation and an occasion for his abuse.
One of Rupnik’s most outspoken victim-accusers, Gloria Branciani, told <em>OSV News</em>: “In Rupnik, the sexual dimension cannot be separated from the creative experience. In portraying me, [Rupnik] explained that I represented the eternal feminine: His artistic inspiration stems precisely from his approach to sexuality.”
In Atlanta, Ruffini said those calling for the Vatican to cease using digital reproductions of works produced by Rupnik are “wrong” to do so. “Removing, deleting, destroying art, has not ever been a good choice," he said.
“I don’t think we have to throw stones, thinking that this is the way of healing someone,” Ruffini said in response to a journalist who posed a follow-up question regarding the victims.
“Do you think that if I put away a photo of an artwork from my—from our—website, I will be more close to the victims? Do you think so?” Ruffini put to the journalist.
“I think you’re wrong,” Ruffini said, “I think you’re wrong,” Ruffini repeated.
“I really think you’re wrong, Ruffini said again.<br><br><em>Photo: Paolo Ruffini, head of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, speaks at a news conference at the Vatican, 4 Oct 2018. (Credit: Paul Haring/CNS.)</em>
