Father Rupnik is still today concelebrating Mass in Rome, despite all the allegations of abuse and restrictions
On the altar, dressed in sacred vestments, Marko Rupnik concelebrates Mass in the Basilica of Santa Prassede in Rome, a few meters from Santa Maria Maggiore.
Rupnik concelebrates among the other priests and lays puts
hands out at the moment of the Eucharist, despite the restrictions imposed on
him by his major superior, Father Johan Verschueren, and which prohibit him,
among other things, "any ministerial and sacramental activity of a public
nature".
Marko Rupnik, theologian and artist known throughout the
world, is in fact at the centre of an investigation launched by the Jesuits
following the allegations of abuse against numerous consecrated women.
On the altar, dressed in sacred vestments, Marko Rupnik
concelebrates mass in the basilica of Santa Prassede in Rome, a few meters from
Santa Maria Maggiore.
It is nine in the morning on Sunday 5 March and the staff of
the Aletti center is in the front rows: the director, Maria Campatelli,
Michelina Tenace, the artists Eva Osterman and Maria Stella Secchiaroli, the
Jesuits Milan Žust and Andrej Brozovic; Alberta Putti, Professor of Dogmatic Rheology
at the Pontifical Gregorian University directs the choir.
Behind the team sit priests and lay people who frequent the
centre and the boys and girls who gravitate around the theology workshop. The Argentine Jesuit, Matias Yunes, who also
grew up in the Aletti center, will deliver the homily.
The restrictions against him were already in place before
the scandal came to light last December, and were reaffirmed in an official
statement released on February 21 by Dir, the Delegation for Roman Inter-Provincial
houses and works of the Society of Jesus .
Provisions which, however, do not seem to disturb him given
that, at least until 22 January, he even preached in Santa Prassede itself and,
a few days ago, he was in the Basilica of San Giovanni in Laterano to
illustrate to a visiting group the mosaics he made in the chapel of the Pontifical
Major Seminary.
Summoned several times by his superior, he did not even show
up to give his version of the allegations of abuse, as Verschueren himself
stated in the statement on the work of the team set up specifically to collect
the victims' complaints. Not only that:
according to internal sources, Rupnik is also continuing to work under cover in
the Vicariate of Rome.
The Aletti Centre, for its part, unites around its mentor:
on 28 February it issued a "letter to friends", in which it stresses
that, while waiting for the truth to be "revealed", the ecclesial and
artistic work of the Centre stops.
“After long years of coaching” - writes the director Maria
Campatelli – “the atelier is now led by a management team, capable of assuming
responsibility for a site both from the theological-liturgical and
artistic-creative point of view, and from the point of view from a technical-administrative
point of view. This will allow us to fulfil all the commitments made up to now
and to take on new ones”. Not a word
about the women abused by the Jesuit, despite the fact that the Jesuit
investigation has already ascertained the reliability of the testimonies
received - at least 15 people, including 13 women and two men.
If on the one hand there is absolute silence on the victims,
on the other the intention of the Aletti Centre is clear to carry on Rupnik's
work, albeit in an "ecclesial" way.
But it is possible to divide between the community of via
Paolina and its founder, when the people who direct it today do not distance
themselves from a priest who was excommunicated latae sententiae for having
absolved in confession a woman with whom he had had sexual intercourse (
excommunication then remitted), and that he has already been the subject of an
ecclesiastical proceeding at the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith
precisely for abuses?
The magic circle around Rupnik is made up of faithful (and
above all very faithful) who were formed with his teaching and under his
influence: Maria Campatelli, Michelina Tenace, Manuela Viezzoli are all former
nuns of the Loyola community who followed Father Rupnik at the time of his
break with Ivanka Hosta, in 1994, following the escape of a nun from the
community in Slovenia.
We also recall that some of the abuses took place right
inside the Aletti Centre, including the threesome between the Jesuit and two
young sisters from the Loyola community in the 1990s (as we reported on Domani
il 18 December 2022).
Several things still need to emerge from the history of the
Aletti Centre, this republic in the heart of the Roman curia which seems to
ignore not only the ongoing investigations of the Jesuits but also the words of
the Pope. Francis, in fact, in an
interview with Ap declared that he was "hurt" by what emerged about
Rupnik and added that he had always been unaware of the story.
An affirmation that in truth does not convince, because it
is difficult to imagine that the Pontiff did not know of the remission of an
excommunication which belonged only to the Holy See. Many well-guarded
mysteries, but the future of the Aletti Centre is far from obvious if, as one
of our sources states, a dossier of more than a thousand pages is currently
deposited with the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Rupnik, approached by Domani at the end of Mass, did not
want to answer.
.jpeg)
Comments