(ZENIT News / Vatican City, 10.14.2025).- After two years of silence and scrutiny, the Holy See has taken a decisive step in the case of Marko Ivan Rupnik, the Slovenian artist and former Jesuit priest whose name, once associated with sacred beauty, has become synonymous with one of the scandals in recent Church history.
On October 13, the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith announced the appointment of a five-member tribunal to hear the charges against Rupnik, who stands accused of serial psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse of women, many of them religious who had once looked to him as a spiritual guide.
The announcement marks the first concrete sign of progress in a case that has strained the Church’s credibility on matters of justice and accountability. The panel, composed of both clergy and laywomen “who hold no positions within the Roman Curia,” was chosen, according to the Vatican, to ensure “autonomy and independence” from the very institution that failed for years to act on the accusations.
Rupnik, now 70, is not an obscure cleric. His mosaics adorn some of the most visited sanctuaries in the Catholic world—from Lourdes to the Vatican itself—offering an irony difficult to ignore: the same hands that crafted images of divine mercy are alleged to have inflicted profound spiritual and emotional harm.
The origins of the case reach back decades, to the Loyola Community he helped found in Ljubljana in the 1980s. Former members have described a web of psychological manipulation cloaked in religious rhetoric, where obedience was twisted into control and spiritual intimacy became the setting for exploitation.
Yet when the first formal complaints reached Rome in 2021, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith—then under Cardinal Luis Ladaria—declined to pursue the matter, citing statutes of limitations for cases involving adults. That decision, widely condemned by victims and advocates, was seen as emblematic of a system still reluctant to confront the abuse of power within adult religious communities.
It was only in 2023, after a public outcry and an intervention by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, that Pope Francis personally lifted the statute of limitations and ordered a canonical process to proceed. By then, Rupnik had been expelled from the Jesuits for disobedience after refusing to cooperate with their internal investigation. He was subsequently incardinated into a Slovenian diocese, apparently free to continue ministerial activities—a move that intensified outrage among the faithful.
For many Catholics, the announcement of the tribunal is not simply a procedural update but a test of whether the Church has learned from its past. “Justice delayed is justice denied,” one canon lawyer close to the case told this correspondent, noting that the investigation has been “painfully slow, and devastating for the credibility of ecclesial justice.”
The tribunal’s composition suggests a deliberate attempt to move beyond the closed clerical circles often accused of shielding perpetrators. All five judges are Europeans, which may facilitate logistical coordination but also invites scrutiny of whether cultural proximity could shape the tribunal’s approach.
What remains unclear is whether the case will proceed through a full canonical trial or through an expedited administrative process—a distinction that will determine both its transparency and its potential for appeal. Either way, the path ahead promises to be lengthy and complex.
Beyond the courtroom, the Rupnik affair continues to haunt the Vatican aesthetically and morally. His mosaics, still visible in Vatican and other Church institutions, stand as uneasy relics of a man once celebrated as a theologian in color and stone. For some, they now symbolize the contradiction between beauty and corruption—an image of the Church itself, radiant yet wounded.
The case of Marko Rupnik may ultimately reveal as much about the future of ecclesial justice as about the sins of one man. For his victims, it is not only a question of accountability but of recognition—of being heard, believed, and, at last, vindicated within a Church that once silenced them in the name of obedience.
As one survivor of the Loyola Community put it recently, “We believed we were serving God. We never imagined that the person speaking of light would lead us into such darkness.”
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