ROME — The lawyer for five women who say they were sexually and spiritually abused by a former Jesuit priest and internationally known religious artist penned a scathing denunciation Tuesday of the Vatican’s secretive legal system, in which her clients have no right to know any details of the trial.
Lawyer in sensitive Vatican abuse case issues scathing critique of church’s secretive legal system In a letter to the Vatican, attorney Laura Sgro demanded to know the status of the Vatican investigation into the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik after an Italian blog, Messa in Latino, reported Monday that Rupnik had been absolved in a canonical trial.
The Vatican has never said what alleged crimes Rupnik faced in its in-house church tribunal, so there was no way to know if he had possibly been absolved of some charges while the investigation continues into others. Vatican officials said Tuesday the case was ongoing.
The Rupnik scandal has become one of the most sensitive matters for the Holy See in recent years, given suggestions that the Slovenian priest was protected for over three decades by his Jesuit superiors and the Vatican hierarchy, up to and including Pope Francis.
Rupnik had been one of the most celebrated contemporary religious artists in the Catholic Church, designing stylized mosaics that decorate churches and basilicas around the world, including at Lourdes and the Vatican.
The scandal exploded in late 2022, when Italian blogs first reported claims of misconduct against him by women and nuns dating back to the 1990s that had been consistently dismissed by the Catholic hierarchy.
The Jesuits admitted that he had been excommunicated briefly in 2020 for having committed one of the Catholic Church’s most serious crimes: using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity.
But the Vatican later refused to prosecute claims of other women against him, arguing they were too old and involved adult women, not minors, at the time of the alleged abuse.
The Jesuits expelled Rupnik from their order in 2023 after more than two dozen women came forward to say he had sexually, spiritually or psychologically abused them over 30 years, some while they were collaborating with him on artworks.
He remains a priest and his supporters have denied he did anything wrong. Maria Campatelli, director of the Rome-based Aletti Center that Rupnik founded has said the claims against him were “defamatory and unproven” and amounted to a form of media “lynching.”
Under pressure from suspicions he had protected his fellow Jesuit, Francis in 2023 waived the statute of limitations on the older claims so that the Vatican could open a proper canonical trial.
It took the Vatican two years to appoint judges. Late last year, Pope Leo XIV confirmed that the trial had opened. While identifying the women who accused Rupnik as “victims,” he urged them to be patient.
“Processes for justice take a long time and I know it’s very difficult for the victims to ask that they
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