I don’t know if our readers have been following it, but Catholic media are alight with the story of another priest who has been reinstated and rehabilitated despite accusations of sexual abuse, in part because he seems to be favored by Pope Francis. The subject is Father Marko Rupnik S.J. — a mosaic artist whose art (which I don’t esteem highly) is everywhere. From Catholic World Report:
There is no escaping it. Lourdes. Fatima. Padre Pio’s crypt in San Giovanni Rotondo. Pope St. John Paul II’s shrines in Krakow and Washington, DC. Madrid’s cathedral adoration chapel. Aparecida. The Redemptoris mater chapel of the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. Even the image most closely associated with Pope Francis’s signature Year of Mercy.
Those are just a few of the Catholic places – several of them major pilgrimage sites – at which one cannot avoid the artwork of Fr. Marko I. Rupnik, SJ, the Jesuit priest and world-renowned mosaic artist accused of sexually, psychologically, and spiritually abusing at least nine women over several years.
Fr. Rupnik’s Jesuit superiors reportedly heard the allegations against him more than twenty years ago, but either turned a blind eye or actively covered for their guy, whose fame was growing and whose stock was high in the papal apartments.
The allegations are eye-popping. Rupnik is accused of sexually abusing nuns in a Slovenian convent he had founded. He’s also accused of one of the most serious church crimes a priest can commit: offering sacramental absolution of sin to his own sexual partner and co-conspirator.
The Jesuits were said to have put restrictions on Rupnik after this came to light, but the possibility of a full trial was waived, and Rupnik continued to be a celebrity priest and even preach a papal retreat. Read the whole sorry story here.