Pope’s top adviser, women who claim they were abused by former Jesuit artist, demand removal of mosaics

Rome, Italy
AP

The scandal surrounding a famous former Jesuit artist accused of psychological, spiritual and sexual abuse of adult women came to a head on Friday after some of his alleged victims and the pope’s anti-harassment adviser asked that his works not be promoted or exhibited. .

Separate initiatives have highlighted how the case of Father Marko Rupnik, whose mosaics decorate some of the Catholic Church’s most visited sanctuaries, continues to cause headaches for the Vatican and Pope Francis, who as a Jesuit himself has been drawn into the scandal.

A mosaic by former Jesuit artist Marko Rupnik is seen on the main facade of the Church of Our Lady of the Canadian Martyrs in Rome, Friday, June 28, 2024. PHOTO: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini.

Early Friday, five women who say they were molested by Rupnik sent letters to Catholic bishops around the world asking them to remove his mosaics from churches, saying their continued display in places of worship is “inappropriate” and re-traumatizing people. victims.

Separately, Cardinal Sean O’Malley, head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, sent his own letter urging Vatican offices to stop exhibiting Rupnik’s works. He said that continuing to use the works ignores the pain of victims and could amount to defending the Slovenian priest.

The two-pronged announcements came after the Vatican’s top communications official strongly defended against the use of images of Rupnik’s artwork on the Vatican News website, saying it caused no harm to the victims and amounted to a Christian response.

The Rupnik scandal first broke publicly in late 2022, when the Jesuit order admitted that he had been briefly excommunicated for committing one of the Catholic Church’s most serious crimes: using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had sexual intercourse.

The case continued to pose problems for the Jesuits and Francis as more than a dozen more women came forward saying they, too, had been victims of Rupnik. The Vatican initially declined to prosecute, arguing that the claims were too old.

Nevertheless, after hearing about the subsequent victims, the Jesuits expelled Rupnik from the order, and Francis – under pressure from suspicions that he was protecting his fellow Jesuit – waived the statute of limitations so that the Vatican could begin the proper canonical process.

To date, Rupnik has not publicly responded to the allegations and has refused to respond to his Jesuit superiors during the investigation. His supporters at his Centro Aletti art studio condemned what they called a media “lynching”.

The debate over what to do with Rupnik’s work in the face of the ongoing Vatican trial against him isn’t so much a matter of “cancel culture” or the age-old debate over whether art like Caravaggio can be appreciated in isolation from the artist’s actions. The reason is that some of Rupnik’s alleged victims claim that the abuse occurred during the creation of the artwork itself, making the resulting mosaics a moving and traumatic reminder of what they endured.

One nun stated that she was molested on the scaffolding while installing a mosaic in the church, and another while posing as its model.

“Despite the passage of years, the trauma experienced by each of them has not been erased and comes alive in the presence of each of Father Rupnik’s works,” they wrote in their letter, signed on behalf of five clients by lawyer Laura Sgro and sent on Friday to over 100 bishops, embassies and Vatican and religious superiors around the world who are known to have Rupnik mosaics in their territories.

Gloria Branciani, one of the first of Rupnik’s victims to go public, said she had long struggled with the question of what to do with his mosaics. However, in an interview on Friday, she said she came to the conclusion that they should be removed from places of worship after learning that other women were molested while making them.

“It doesn’t mean the work is destroyed, it means it can be moved somewhere else,” she said in an interview on Friday. “It is important that it does not remain linked to the expression of people’s faith… because the use of a work that was born from the inspiration of abuse cannot remain in a place where people go to pray.”

Lawyer Laura Sgro’ (left) speaks with Mirjam Kovac, center, and Gloria Branciani as they arrive for an interview with the Associated Press in Rome on June 28, 2024. Kovac and Branciani are two of five women who urged Catholic bishops around the world removed mosaics from their churches by former Jesuit artist, priest Marek Rupnik, after accusing him of mental, spiritual and sexual abuse. PHOTO: AP Photo/Andrew Medichini.

The Vatican’s trial against Rupnik is ongoing – Sgro says she has not been contacted to testify about her clients – and many of Rupnik’s defenders inside and outside the Vatican say it is important to hold off on a final verdict until after The Vatican will issue a ruling.

But the scandal came back to life last week when, at a Catholic news conference, Vatican communications chief Paolo Ruffini was asked why the Vatican News website continued to display an image of the Rupnik mosaic.

Ruffini defended the use of the image, saying he had no authority to judge Rupnik and that in the history of civilization, “removing, deleting or destroying works of art has never been a good choice.”

When it was pointed out that he did not mention the impact on victims of seeing Rupnik’s work promoted by the Vatican, Ruffini noted that the women were not minors and that while “being close to the victims is important, I don’t know if this (removing the artwork) is the way to heal.”

When reporter Paulina Guziak of Our Sunday Visitor News suggested otherwise, Ruffini said, “I think you’re wrong. I think you’re wrong. I really think you’re wrong.”

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His comments shocked victims and apparently prompted O’Malley to send a letter to all Vatican offices in which he expressed hope that “pastoral prudence will prevent the display of works of art in a way that might suggest an acquittal or subtle defense” of the alleged abusers.

“We must avoid sending a signal that the Holy See is unaware of the mental suffering experienced by so many people,” O’Malley wrote on June 26 on behalf of the commission.

The women who wrote their own letter said they greatly appreciated O’Malley’s statement, which they saw as a show of support that was a pleasant and unexpected surprise.

“It’s a sign that the times are ripe,” said Mirjam Kovac, a Slovenian canon lawyer at the Pontifical Gregorian University and a former member of the Rupnik community.

Sister Samuelle, a French nun who says Rupnik manipulated her for years, taking advantage of her vulnerability to finally touch her intimately as she stood on scaffolding laying a mosaic, thanked O’Malley “from the bottom of my heart.”

“In this difficult, important and traumatic situation, we took this important step with our letter. And I take his declaration as a sign that someone else cares,” she said in an interview.

For victims’ advocates, the Rupnik scandal and Ruffini’s comments were further evidence that the church in general, and the Vatican in particular, have consistently dismissed the abuse of adult women as simply sinful behavior by priests rather than traumatic abuse that affects them for life.

“The continued use of Rupnik’s work is incredibly hurtful to many survivors of violence, who see it as a symbol of the continued lack of concern for the needs of all survivors,” Sara Larson, executive director of Awake, an organization that supports survivors of violence, said in an email.

However, removing mosaics is not an easy matter, as some cover the entire facades of the basilica (Lourdes, France); entire interiors (Vatican’s own Redemptoris Mater chapel); or, in the case of the sanctuary of St. Padre Pio in southern Italy, the entire smaller church was gilded from floor to ceiling.

Other churches have smaller mosaics but are still visible. The Rupnik-designed mosaics inside the Basilica of the Holy Trinity in Fatima, Portugal, are so integral to its artistic and iconographic significance that the sanctuary is seeking UNESCO World Heritage status.

But other churches are reconsidering. Bishop Jean-Marc Micas, whose diocese includes the sanctuary of Lourdes in France, announced last year the formation of a study group to consider what to do with the Rupnik mosaics. A decision is expected to be made soon.

Reflection also takes place at the National Sanctuary of St. John Paul II Knights of Columbus in Washington. The Knights said the outcome of the Vatican’s canonical trial against Rupnik would be “an important factor in our deliberations.”