Sr. Danielle Victoria
(ZENIT News – Sisters of The Little Way / 02.13.2025).- TW: This article contains accounts of sexual abuse.
Dipping my fingers into the holy water font, I immediately notice large, wide-eyed figures swirling around me in bright luminescence. I freeze, trying to stabilize myself. Eerily reminiscent of childhood bouts with hypoglycemia, my surroundings are distorted as if I were in a circus. The features of the people around me seem exaggerated and the ground unstable beneath my feet. As I cross myself, my thoughts race, “This is a Rupnik chapel. I didn’t realize this would be a Rupnik chapel. I wasn’t prepared for this.”
As I walk into the chapel, my heart pounds in my ears. I motion to Sr. Theresa Aletheia in distress. She looks at me with knowing sadness and discreetly ushers me into the nearest pew. My adrenaline subsides as I begin to pray. For the first time since my experience with an abusive spiritual director, I feel unsafe at Mass. I had come with joy to visit a friend and to worship God. Instead, I was caught off guard, struggling to conceal how deeply I had reacted.
Surrounded by the effect of Rupnik’s creations, my vulnerability had no place to rest in a space completely dominated by the imagination of a sexual predator. Art intended to elevate my soul for worship had instead enveloped my senses with reminders of how clerical abuse can diabolically twist beauty.
Masterful but not Beautiful
The floor-to-ceiling mosaic chapel I walked into that day was designed by Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik. A former Jesuit, the priest now faces multiple accusations of sexual abuse from female religious, many of whom were involved in the creation of his artwork. After great public pressure to address the accusations of abuse, an independent tribunal at the Vatican has been set up to determine Rupnik’s fate.
Celebrated for many years, Rupnik and his team of artists at Centro Aletti sought to create contemporary liturgical art by blending Eastern and Western tradition. As an artist, I can understand why many were drawn to Rupnik’s work. His designs maintain an interesting consistency and coherence as well as a boldness in color and asymmetry that creates a sense of movement. Drawing the viewer into a cosmos of sacred symbols, his installations encompass entire environments. Scooping the viewer into a world of intentionality, his work reorients tradition in a way that feels authoritative and purposeful.
Centro Aletti, the community that assists in producing and installing Rupnik’s work, describes their artistic style by focusing on the themes of light, movement, and brightness. Their “new organic language” is free, they argue, from anything “gloomy, dark, oppressive, or depressing—it’s an explosion of light.” This aspect of his art always unsettled me; the abundance, brightness, and proliferation of his designs struck me as impersonal, more a product of capitalism’s influence on the Church than something sacred or precious. Overshadowed by revelations of abuse, the emphasis on explosive, bright light in Rupnik’s mosaics becomes not just uncomfortable but ironic. His artistic choices, unfortunately, make sense in terms of research on people who sexually abuse others, which often highlights the stage of “grooming” victims and communities by maintaining an image that comes across to others much like Rupnik’s icons—exceedingly “bright.”
St. John Paul II calls artists “prophets” and “ambassadors of beauty,” tasked with bearing witness to Christ’s presence in the world. Artists are especially entrusted with safeguarding vulnerability, a sacred entry point for God’s healing presence. The Incarnation—God becoming a vulnerable baby—is the ultimate expression of this truth. Throughout history, artists have depicted this primal vulnerability from the Nativity to the Crucifixion. Charismatic, talented, and influential, Rupnik used his artistic skill, fame, and intuition, particularly the vulnerability at the heart of his creative process, to exploit his victims rather than glorify God. Perverting his sacred task as an artist, Rupnik used his authority as a priest and his mastery as an artist to exploit the very vulnerability he was called to protect and hold sacred.
Sacred Art or Artifacts of Abuse?
Because Rupnik was a master in his field, some have argued for the preservation of his art. This line of argument often compares him to artists like Raphael or Caravaggio, who were far from model Christians. However, while Raphael and Caravaggio’s sins were separate from their art, Rupnik’s abuse and perverted mysticism was integral to his creative process. His victims’ testimonies reveal that his art cannot be disentangled from his crimes. Rather, it was intrinsic to it.
As predators in church contexts commonly do, Rupnik targeted devout, dedicated women. The co-founder of a women’s religious community, Rupnik is estimated by one of his victims to have abused almost half of its members. Based on the victims’ testimonies, much of the abuse involved his artistic process. One victim shared in an interview,
Once he asked me to pose for one of his paintings because he had to draw Jesus’ collarbone and he [said he] was not looking for ‘worldly’ girls, who only expressed sexuality in his view, but someone like me who was seeking. … It was not difficult to accept and unbutton a few buttons on my blouse. For me, who was naive and inexperienced, it only meant helping a friend. On that occasion he kissed me lightly on the mouth, telling me that this was how he kissed the altar where he celebrated the Eucharist.
Another former sister described being sexually abused on scaffolding while installing mosaics in a sanctuary. As one sister put it, “His sexual obsession was not extemporaneous but deeply connected to his conception of art and his theological thought.” These testimonies decode and illuminate a disturbing pattern: Rupnik’s artistic process was intertwined with his abuse, making his creations artifacts of abuse rather than sacred art.
In the history of iconography, upon which Rupnik’s work is based, the process is as important as the end result. An icon is written not produced. Iconography is considered more of a prayer than an artistic expression where the artist’s hand is thought to be guided by the inspiration of God. Writing an icon is a sacred experience of effacement for the artist as he or she is caught up in the creative action of the Holy Spirit. Rather than reveal the Father through his art, however, Rupnik chose by his actions to ambiguate, distort and disfigure the face of God. Through the perversion of his artistic process, Rupnik violated not only consecrated women and himself, he committed sacrilege— the violation or injurious treatment of a sacred person or object. This sacrilege, inherent in the process of the creation of his art, is why Rupnik’s art cannot be considered sacred art.
Conclusion: A Call to Memory and Renewal
For Christians, memory is central to our faith. Our liturgical spaces hold the memory of our salvation, sanctified by Christ’s words: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Sacred art is meant to help us remember what Christ did for us. Rupnik’s art, on the other hand, serves as a reminder of abuse and betrayal. An artifact of abuse, his art tells a story of exploitation and institutional failure. To acknowledge the harm done, honor victims, and reclaim these spaces for true worship, we should commit to remove his works from sacred spaces—not as an act of erasure but as a step toward healing and renewal.
Among the first of Rupnik’s victims to publicly share her story, Gloria Branciani has argued that “using a work … borne from an inspiration of abuse cannot remain in a place where people go to pray.” She suggests that Rupnik’s mosaics need to at least be put in a different context. I agree and suggest that Rupnik’s works should be considered contemporary art, rather than sacred art. At Lourdes, for example, the decision to no longer illuminate Rupnik’s mosaics reflects a sacred intuition—what was presented as light actually veiled darkness. Allowing his works to remain in a state of shadow acknowledges the abuse and institutional failure they represent. These actions initiate a restorative process of healing within the Body of Christ and his Church.
As we enter this Jubilee of Hope, however, I propose that we go beyond recontextualizing Rupnik’s art. If we truly care about being an evangelical witness in this modern world, then how we address complex circumstances of abuse matters. We should respond to this situation in a way that Rupnik did not—by respecting the vulnerability of others—and by making great sacrifices that recognize and honor this vulnerability. In this spirit, I would suggest that any institution that must make decisions around Rupnik mosaics should commit to dismantling them. Artists could use the tiles to create new mosaic installations dedicated to survivors. These mosaics could be housed in a chapel dedicated to survivors of abuse. Communicating from the authoritative voice of the Church, a chapel dedicated to victims would say, “We see you, we are sorry that we failed to protect you, bearers of God’s beauty in your vulnerability. And we are listening. You are the Church.”
What better way to celebrate this Jubilee year of Hope than by enlisting artists in this restorative work?
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