The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) received five new abuse complaints against the former Jesuit Fr Marko Rupnik.
Laura Sgrò, a lawyer known for her role in a number of Vatican cases, presented the complaints to the DDF on 3 April to include in its investigation of Rupnik opened in October last year after Pope Francis lifted the statute of limitations in his case.
There are now understood to be at least 20 complaints against Rupnik.
Two of the new complainants, Miriam Kovac and Gloria Branciani, made public allegations against Rupnik in a press conference alongside Sgrò in February. They described his spiritual, psychological and in Branciani’s case sexual abuse perpetrated in the 1980s and 1990s, when they were sisters of the Loyola Community of which he was a founder.
Rupnik was a distinguished artist and theologian until incidents of his alleged abuse became widely known in late 2022.
The Vatican’s handling of the scandal has drawn widespread criticism, renewed in recent weeks after the 2024 Annuario Pontificio directory listed him as a consultor to the Dicastery for Divine Worship.
His name also appeared on the dicastery’s website, and both still described him as a Jesuit, although the Society of Jesus expelled him last July for his “refusal to observe the vow of obedience” as it attempted to respond to the abuse allegations.
A dicastery official told the Canadian ultraconservative outlet LifesiteNews on 18 April that Rupnik’s name had been included in the directory from previous editions in error. It has since been removed from the website.
Rupnik’s had a considerable reputation as a liturgical artist, based at the Centro Aletti in Rome, and his work decorates many prominent Church sites including the Shrine of Lourdes, where a commission is due to report imminently on the future of his mosaics outside the basilica.
In the US, council of the Knights of St Columbus in Washington, DC has asked the order’s national leadership to remove his mosaics from the city’s St John Paul II Shrine, which it sponsors, to be “replaced with liturgical art suitable to the celebration of the sacraments”.
At a LOUDfence service in the UK this week, shoes representing sisters abused by Rupnik were placed before the altar alongside a pair of shoes belonging to a seminarian who was abused during his studies.
Bishop Patrick McKinney of Nottingham joined clergy at St Anne’s Church, Buxton in prostrating himself before the altar during the service of healing and support for victims and survivors of abuse.
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