CNA Staff, Dec 15, 2023 / 09:38 am (CNA).
The Vatican has decided to shut down the religious community of sisters co-founded by accused abuser Father Marko Rupnik, the Slovenian Archdiocese of Ljubljana announced Friday.
Sisters from the Loyola Community were presented with a decree on Dec. 14 from the Vatican Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life on the dissolution of their community “due to serious problems concerning the exercise of authority and the way of living together,” the archdiocese said.
According to the Dec. 15 statement, the dissolution of the community must take place within one year. The Vatican decree ordering the dissolution of the Loyola Community was issued on Oct. 20.
Rupnik co-founded the Loyola Community with Sister Ivanka Hosta in Ljubljana, Slovenia, more than three decades ago. The priest and mosaic artist was removed from the Jesuits in June after having been accused of spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse of religious sisters. Yet the Slovenian Diocese of Koper confirmed on Oct. 25 that Rupnik was incardinated there at the end of August for priestly ministry, a revelation that sparked a public outcry and shocked Rupnik’s alleged victims.
Since then, the Vatican has announced that Rupnik will face a canonical process over the abuse allegations after Pope Francis decided to waive the statute of limitations on the claims.
According to one alleged Italian victim, Rupnik guided her to enter the Loyola Community in Slovenia, demanding “absolute availability and obedience,” isolating her from her friends and family, at a time when he was physically and spiritually abusing her.
“Father Marko had openly started to duress other sisters in the community with the usual psycho-spiritual strategies he had already used with me, with the goal of having sex with as many women as possible,” the former Loyola sister told the Italian media outlet “Domani” in December 2022.
“At the beginning of the 1990s there were 41 sisters and, from what I know, Father Rupnik managed to abuse almost 20,” she said.
Rupnik acted as the Loyola Community’s chaplain until he dramatically broke from the religious community in September 1993. Several sisters left the community with Rupnik, following him to Rome, where he subsequently opened his art and theology school, the Aletti Center. The priest artist has also been accused of engaging in sex acts with consecrated women at the center.
Hosta acted as the superior general of the Loyola community from 1994 to 2023. She was quietly removed from the governance of the community in June by a decree sent by Rome auxiliary bishop Daniele Libanori, SJ.
The former religious superior was ordered not to have any contact with current or past members of the Loyola Community for three years and, as an “external penance,” to make a monthly pilgrimage for one year to a Marian shrine to pray “for the victims of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik’s behavior and for all the religious of the Loyola Community,” whom she is accused of harming.
Libanori first uncovered allegations of Rupnik’s sexual and spiritual abuse of religious sisters when he was sent to investigate the Loyola Community in Slovenia amid complaints about Hosta.
According to the statement from the Archdiocese of Ljubljana, Archbishop Stanislav Zore asked for a visitation of the Loyola Community in 2019 and informed the Vatican dicastery for consecrated life of the results in February 2020.
Because the Loyola Community had its general house in Rome, the Vatican dicastery handed the matter over to the Diocese of Rome, who sent a commissioner to speak with the sisters and sent a final report to the dicastery in September 2022 through the Apostolic Nunciature.
The Diocese of Rome issued a report on its investigation of Rupnik’s Aletti Center in September concluding that the center had “a healthy community life … that is free of particular serious issues,” a statement that drew “bewilderment” from victims of Rupnik’s alleged spiritual and sexual abuse.
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CYA. Another McCarrick. All to protect the Pope. Never a care for the victims.
Better late than never I guess, although I think Francis was seriously considering “never” as an option if he could swing it.
Time to clean our churches and shrines of his unimaginative derivative confections. It is not up to the designation “art” anymore than his corral of sycophants could be termed consecrated life.
Who is overseeing this catastrophe? In the secular world there would be criminal investigation long ago and real consequence. How much longer does this obscenity get dragged out?
Let’s stop with the euphemism of “abuser.” Let’s, instead, refer to this behavior as it is: sexual predation. Just as with sexual predators of youth, this is little different as it uses power differences to take advantage of those who are vulnerable and dependent on the predator.
This sin of sexual predation is worsened when those in authority over the predator act to cover up, defend, protect and feign sympathy for the victims of the predator. This is a sin against justice. Standing accused are many in the hierarchy of our Church who know about the sexual predations of clergy and pretend ignorance or just choose to look the other way. There is a circle in Hell reserved for not only the predators but their protectors.
1) That the community went on for so long with at least half of its members implicated in some explicit connection to Rupnik suggests that there is something pathological about the group as a whole that merits its suppression, its healthier members going to healthier communities;
2) My question is: how is it that a community in Ljubljana generates such reaction but the Holy See, the Roman Archdiocesan curia, and everybody else is not doing the same thing towards the cash cow that is the Aletti Center?
3) Ignatius never envisioned a female branch of the Jesuits (in contrast to the Dominicans or Franciscans) — how is it that Rupnik had a greater “charism” than the Society’s founder? Another example of how “special” he was?
This comment is directed toward all of the three previous comments. Thank you, James for your remarks. However, the atrocity of the sexual abuse scandal has been going on for decades now and is largely responsible for the decline in the respect of teaching authority of the bishops and the Church in general. It predates Francis and the incompetency in handling it predates him. James, you are right. These scandal are atrocious stains upon our great Church.
Sexual abuse has been present since the beginning. Of course, even St. Paul addresses it. It is in the nature of fallen humanity. Concupiscence is a consequence of Original Sin — a truth of the faith which is presently under scrutiny amongst certain “theologians” who presently hold favor.
One need be aware that before the sixties sexual issues were not dealt with in any manner similar to what the present social matrix supports. There was a time not long ago when even certain cancers were not spoken of in company because they were thought to be consequential of sexual behavior. It was a different world and I remember it. Those social conventions prevented society broadly and the Christian denominations specifically from dealing with abuse as it should be dealt with. And never forget for a moment this is NOT a Catholic issue. It is a reality across the spectrum of Christianity, and indeed among all other faiths even with far greater frequency. The media has made it a Catholic problem in order to undermine traditional Catholic sexual morality — divorce, contraception, abortion being their secular ideals. Then of course there is the reverence we have for priestly celibacy and the consecrated life which must in the secular mindset be mocked and delegitimize.
At this point in time I would suggest we are doing far better than most, but with little thanks to the the Bergoglian boys club not as well as we must. The deficiencies of the present Vatican administration — in the current social context — are jaw dropping and absolutely inexcusable.