The Jesuit accused of abuse was directing two doctoral theses at the university and had other upcoming assignments. The Vatican maintains silence on the Rupnik case.
Newsdesk (17/01/2023 7:39 PM, Gaudium Press) The website Church Militant reports that the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome has dismissed Father Marko Rupnik, an artist accused of having abused several religious of the Loyola Community. In addition, the university, run by Jesuits, has ordered that all references to the priest be removed from its website.
According to a Church Militant source at the Gregorian, at a meeting of the university’s deans held last Tuesday, Dean Mark A. Lewis, SJ insisted that Fr. Rupnik could no longer be a mentor to two students at this institution, even though one of them was nearing the end of his thesis.
Dean Lewis also cancelled all of Fr. Rupnik’s future university-related activities. Rupnik was a professor at the Gregorian until 2020, teaching courses on inculturation, mission and art.
The Vatican remains silent
No Vatican authority has yet commented on the findings of the investigation by Loyola Community Commissioner Msgr. Daniele Libanori who is also Auxiliary Bishop of Rome and who qualified, in a December statement to his clergy, as credible the then-publicized accusations against Fr. Rupnik. The conclusions of his report on the visit to the Loyola Community were delivered to the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in mid-2021, and most likely also to the Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life, headed by Brazilian Cardinal Braz de Aviz. However, even after that report, Fr. Rupnik continued to carry out a full schedule of activities, including his participation as a consultant in two Roman dicasteries, spiritual retreats, conferences, execution of works of art, etc.
The day before yesterday, in an interview with the National Catholic Reporter, Archbishop Charles Scicluna, assistant secretary of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and an experienced investigator in such cases, said that “most of the suffering I have seen is when victims are left in the dark without any follow-up regarding the revelation they have made.”
We have a law and we have a system that empowers people to report abuse or misconduct, but you also have the right to know what happens to your reports,” declared the Maltese archbishop, who, however, when asked explicitly about the Rupnik case, “refused to comment.
Compiled by Roberta MacEwan
