A renowned priest is accused of abusing numerous women, rocking the Catholic Jesuit order, of which Pope Francis is a member and raising concerns about the Church’s policy on punishing offenders.
Father Marko Rupnik, a 68-year-old Slovenian priest and well-known artist, is charged with sexual and psychological abuse of many women in a religious community in Ljubljana in the early 1990s, according to press sources.
Before the Jesuits, one of the major Roman Catholic orders founded in 1540, disclosed it had approved Rupnik, denying him the privilege to hear confession, the case first surfaced in the Italian media.
The Vatican’s dicastery (ministry) for the doctrine of the faith was involved in the case but said it could not put Rupnik on trial because the statute of limitations had expired.
The Jesuits later revealed that, in a separate case, Rupnik had also been convicted of the ‘absolution of an accomplice… in a sin against the sixth commandment,’ namely absolving someone for having sex with him.
This is a serious crime in church law, for which Rupnik was automatically excommunicated from the Catholic Church in May 2020. The ex-communication was lifted by a Vatican decree later that month.
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