The Rupnik Business Will Stain and Possibly Define Pope Francis’s Legacy

The stain is indelible and Francis owns it! He has revealed his true colours in l'affaire Rupnik. But remember, 'Who am I to judge'!

From Catholic World Report

By Christopher R. Altieri

Over the past several days, hard-boiled newsman Ed Condon reluctantly conceded that “there is a motivating force for the protection of Rupnik,” and Robert Mickens—a veteran Vatican hand generally well disposed to Francis—openly asked whether Pope Francis isn’t the one protecting him.

How bad is this Rupnik business? It is very, very bad. The Rupnik business is worse—by orders of magnitude—than l’Affaire Barros, l’Affaire Inzoli, worse even than l’Affaire Zanchetta. The disgraceful rehabilitation of Danneels is mere tasteless imprudence by comparison. The Rupnik business will stain Pope Francis’s legacy, and possibly define it.

Over the past several days, hard-boiled newsman Ed Condon reluctantly conceded that “there is a motivating force for the protection of Rupnik,” and Robert Mickens—a veteran Vatican hand generally well disposed to Francis—openly asked whether Pope Francis isn’t the one protecting him.

The cardinal vicar of Rome, Angelo De Donatis, said as much in words back in December of last year, but he may have been firing a parting shot before Francis effectively neutered him just over a week into 2023.

In case you need help placing the name, Rupnik is Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik, olim Jesuit expelled from the order earlier this year after several somehow stymied attempts to bring him to justice on charges of serial sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse against more than a dozen victims—the vast majority women religious—over three decades, much of which Rupnik spent in Rome at an art institute he founded, called the Centro Aletti.

Rupnik is still a cleric, though he is a sort of Ronin, without a bishop or other religious order willing to take him—as far as we know—though there are claims that several other Jesuits once attached to the Centro Aletti have asked to be released from their order and may be forming something of a circle around him.

Last week, De Donatis issued a statement giving Rupnik’s Centro Aletti a clean bill of health after an in-house investigation. There was a collective eye roll at that. De Donatis’s investigator, Giacomo Incitti, also cast aspersions on the work of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith—the Vatican office responsible for investigating and prosecuting sex crimes—and that raised hackles, as well as eyebrows.

The DDF some years ago declared that Rupnik had incurred an excommunication for absolving an “accomplice” in a “sin against the sixth commandment”—technical legal jargon for giving sacramental absolution to someone for the sin of a sex act the confessor and the penitent committed together—which is a very serious crime according to Church law. DDF almost immediately lifted the penalty.

After reviewing “copious documentary material” he really ought not have seen, given the cardinal vicar’s vehement insistence that Rupnik was beyond his reach, Incitti claimed to have examined the material as part of his investigative mandate from the cardinal vicar himself and to have discovered “gravely anomalous procedures” surrounding Rupnik’s excommunication. The statement from the vicariate said that Incitti passed his findings up the ladder.

That also raised hackles, as well as eyebrows, not least because the only higher rung on the ladder is the one on which Pope Francis sits. The thing that sparked outrage, however, was Incitti’s praise for the remaining Centro Aletti members, who, “[T]hough they were saddened by the accusations that came down, and the ways in which they were handled, chose to maintain silence—despite the vehemence of the media—to guard their hearts and not claim any irreproachability with which to stand as judges of others.”

Yes, you read that right.

Incitti praised Rupnik’s acolytes for keeping mum and for taking the high road in the face of what the current head of the Centro Aletti, Maria Campatelli—who had a special private audience with Pope Francis mere days before the Rome vicariate put out its statement about Incitti’s investigation—described in an earlier letter as “a media campaign based on unproven and defamatory accusations” that “have exposed the person of Fr. Rupnik and the whole Centro Aletti to a form of lynching.”

That led several of Rupnik’s accusers to publish an open letter saying that the report from the Rome vicariate, coupled with the private audience that Pope Francis had granted Campatelli just days before the release of the vicariate’s report, “leave us speechless, with no voice to cry out our dismay, our scandal.”

“In these two events,” the women wrote, “we recognize that the Church cares nothing for the victims and for those seeking justice.” Nor were those two events “accidental, [not] even in their succession in time.” Together, they demonstrate “that the ‘zero tolerance on abuse in the Church’ was just a publicity campaign, which was instead only followed by often covert actions, which instead supported and covered up the abusers.”

Another reason level-headed, judicious, and circumspect observers are growing suspicious is that the DDF would eventually rule that all the abuse charges against Rupnik were statute-barred. They closed the case on Rupnik.

That Pope Francis did not waive the statute of limitations is baffling.

Statutes of limitations exist in order to ensure that accused persons get fair trials. In Rupnik’s case, there was mountainous evidence and ample opportunity for defense counsel to confront witnesses. So, Pope Francis’s refusal to waive the statute in Rupnik’s case just doesn’t make sense. It is especially baffling, given Francis’s confessed closeness to Rupnik and admiration for him.

Couple it with Francis’s praise of Rupnik’s art in suspect times, i.e., in June, when he lauded a mosaic depiction of the Madonna and Child for the benefit of participants in a Marian Congress in Aparecida, Brazil, and you have more than enough to justify at least perplexity. There’s lots more, besides. Mere rehearsal of it all would fill a book at this point.

That, by the way, is why—in one important sense, at least—it doesn’t matter whether Pope Francis is the one *protecting Rupnik or even trying to rehabilitate him.

The Rupnik business dramatizes the appalling dysfunction of the Church’s legal system these days, especially her criminal justice system. Said simply, she has none worth the name. Investigations and prosecutions nominally depend on one office that is itself wholly dependent on one man, an all-powerful ruler.

This would be a problem, were that man a living saint and the very avatar of judgment. Pope Francis has already given incontrovertible proof of his willingness to protect his friends and put his hand on the scales.

So far, Pope Francis hasn’t lifted a finger to see that Rupnik does face justice. For a guy who has more than earned his reputation for hands-on leadership—indeed he has cultivated it—his very public refusal to touch the Rupnik business can’t fail to suggest a desire to keep his prints off it, and that’s just as bad if not worse.

Al amigo todo, runs the (in)famous maxim Juan Peron claimed for his own, al enemigo, ni justicia.

Whether by action or inaction, Pope Francis has thus far seen to it that Rupnik should receive everything but justice.