ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) – Die-hard loyalists and colleagues of a celebrity artist who has been accused of sexually abusing more than 25 nuns are condemning the Society of Jesus for expelling the predator priest.
Rupnik loyalist Fr. Milan Žust
On Saturday, two days after the Jesuits announced the expulsion of Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, the Centro Aletti published a strong statement defending the serial abuser who cofounded the Rome-based art studio and community for Christian artists.
The statement accused the Jesuits of favoring “a media campaign” against Rupnik “based on defamatory and unproven accusations (which exposed the person of Fr. Rupnik and the Aletti Center to forms of lynching).”
Instead, the Jesuits should have supplied “the press with correct information, based on written acts and documents in their possession, which would demonstrate a truth different from that which was being published,” the statement argued.
Dr. Maria Campatelli and the Aletti Center team who signed the statement did not explain why they themselves had stubbornly refused to answer queries from the media (including Church Militant) since the scandal erupted in December 2022.
The statement did not clarify why Fr. Rupnik had never declared his innocence despite four religious sisters testifying in graphic detail to the sexual abuses they claim the Jesuit artist perpetrated on them — including forcing them into a threesome, oral sex and pornography.
Instead, Rupnik’s allies said that the Society of Jesus had expelled the priest for refusing to “observe the vow of obedience,” after a decree dated March 9, 2023, ordered his transfer to a Jesuit community in Lombardy, Italy.
Unfair Dismissal
The Aletti Center statement claimed that Rupnik’s dismissal was unfair because on January 21, 2023, he had already “submitted a request to leave the Society,” since “trust in his superiors had collapsed in toto” after the Jesuit leadership favored the anti-Rupnik media narrative.
Rupnik’s colleagues also accused the Society of Jesus of failing to supply the press with “correct information” including “written acts and documents in their possession, which would demonstrate a truth different from that which was being published.”
Dr. Maria Campatelli, a theologian and current director of the Aletti Center, also did not comment on Rupnik’s excommunication by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith for absolving a woman with whom he had entertained “de sexto” relations.
The Italian media outlet Messa in Latino reported that it was Pope Francis, a fellow Jesuit and close friend, who lifted Rupnik’s excommunication hours after a tribunal unanimously imposed the sentence in 2019. Rupnik has also enjoyed close relations with Pope Benedict XVI and Pope John Paul II.
When asked if Pope Francis had intervened in the Rupnik case, Jesuit superior general Fr. Arturo Sosa replied, “Generally, the heads of the dicastery report the cases to the pope. I can imagine that the prefect spoke to the Holy Father, but I cannot say yes or no.”
In an Associated Press interview in December, Francis equivocated when repeatedly asked about his involvement in the Rupnik case. “I think that compensation was paid [to the victims], but the arrangement is not clear to me there, but it was fixed,” the pope conceded.
“I was involved in a small process that came to the Congregation [for the Doctrine] of the Faith in the past,” Francis said, without specifying if his involvement in the “small process” was a reference to lifting the Jesuit’s excommunication.
Jesuit Exodus
Campatelli also reveals that other Jesuits belonging to the Aletti Center have requested an indult to leave the Society of Jesus, and “each is awaiting the conclusion of his own case, in order to be able to continue in the exercise of priestly ministry.”
Argentinian Jesuit Fr. Matías Yunes has already left the Society of Jesus, sources told Church Militant. Yunes no longer appends his name with the initials “S.J.” Father Milan Žust, a Slovenian Jesuit close to Rupnik, is also leaving the order, the sources added.
The vice director of the Aletti Center, Fr. Ivan Bresciani is also a Slovenian Jesuit, as is Fr. Andrej Brozovič. The team also includes Fr. Jaromír Zádrapa, Madrid-born Fr. Oscar Gutiérrez González and nine women.
In February, hundreds of fans announced on a “Friends of Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik” Facebook page that they are standing in “solidarity” with the Slovenian priest accused of serial sexual abuse.
Fr. James Jackson
The Facebook page, which has 3,700 members who continue to post messages of support and prayers for Rupnik, was locked by the administrators after Church Militant reported on the groupies, who made no reference to the victims of the predator priest.
Laity Enable Abusers
“The more I report on priestly sex abuse, the more I am convinced the primary enablers of clerical misconduct are Catholic laity,” Church Militant’s investigative reporter Christine Niles observed.
Last week, Niles reported on traditionalist Catholics demonstrating similar uncritical support to Fr. James Jackson, a member of the traditionalist Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter, who pled guilty to receipt of child pornography.
“The recent Jackson and Rupnik cases prove one thing — all of Catholicism is sick; trad Catholics will cover up for a trad psycho priest, and leftist Catholics will cover up for a leftist psycho priest.”
“The Church is full of enablers,” Joseph Sciambra, a victim of clerical sex abuse tweeted.
Prominent traditionalist Catholic and editor of Crisis magazine Eric Sammons responded, “That’s apples and oranges. Not only is Rupnik a monster, his art is monstrous. What Jackson said in the doc [Mass of the Ages] is true, no matter what terrible things he may have done.”
Meanwhile, responding to the news of Rupnik’s expulsion and the debate over whether churches should expunge the works of the mosaic artist, Pope Francis’ hagiographer Austen Ivereigh said he would continue to treasure the works of the serial abuser.
“Sacraments are ex opere operato; why not a great religious artist’s work?” Ivereigh tweeted. “Rupnik stays on my wall; I don’t approve of what he has done, but his are works of grace, and I don’t want to reject grace.”
Bolivian homopredator Fr. Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno
Many Catholics expressed outrage after Pope Francis showcased a Rupnik icon of the Madonna and Child to send papal greetings in a brief video message to the XVI Marian Congress in Aparecida, earlier this month, Church Militant reported.
The Society of Jesus is experiencing an unprecedented tsunami of media revelations regarding sex abuse perpetrated by some of its senior members and cover-up by superiors.
In May, the Jesuits in Bolivia suspended and began investigating eight former provincials for their roles in protecting a fellow Jesuit who abused more than 85 males, including several seminarians, in the 1980s.
Father Alfonso Pedrajas Moreno’s predation was covered up at the order’s highest levels in Rome by Pope Francis’ tertianship instructor, Fr. José Arroyo, and by Fr. Marcos Recolons, assistant ad providentiam to Fr. Adolfo Nicolás, the Jesuit superior general from 2008 to 2016.