Shocking details revealed in the Rupnik case. More to be revealed in series of articles.

According to the media report below, the Superior of the Loyola community and confidante of the alleged abuser Marko Rupnik, Ivanka Hosta, has been given an ecclesiastical disciplinary decree because of her leadership style. The online magazine "Sete Margens" on Sunday published excerpts from an alleged decree issued by Roman Auxiliary Bishop Daniele Libanori banning Hosta from leading the community. Libanori was reportedly commissioned by the Vatican Dicastery of religious orders to carry out a visitation of the community founded by Rupnik and Hosta in Slovenia between October 2020 and July 2022. Allegations of abuse have been made against Rupnik from within the community, relating to alleged acts between the mid-1980s and 2018. Hosta is said to have been aware of allegations as early as the 1980s and 1990s, but took no action.

The ravages of Father Rupnik- first article now published in a series of five articles.

Loyola Community: superior general “exiled” in Portugal for authoritarianism and spiritual abuse

At a time when ecclesiastical movements are emerging that appear to want to clean up the image of priest and artist Marko Rupnik, 7MARGENS shows how the female religious institution that he helped create was born crooked and, confirming the popular saying, never straightened out again. Here we reveal, in a series of articles, how, from the sexual and power abuses of a priest, it passed to the authoritarianism and spiritual abuses of the Superior General for more than three decades. And we also reveal the practice of a Bishop-commissioner who seems to believe that only the truth will save the Church.

Father Marko Rupnik, recently expelled from the Society of Jesus, left shocking traces of suffering in many of his victims, as became public in December 2022. The abuse may have been subject to the statute of limitations, but this suffering was not, because the Church, through action and inaction, it provoked and continues to provoke a second form of victimization in them. But Rupnik, whose ecclesiastical status is unknown today, also left marks on the Loyola Institute, which he helped to found, which, albeit indirectly, have survived to this day and await an outcome that is not expected to be very exciting.

Ivanka Hosta, who, since her student days, was “hand in hand” with Rupnik in the process of creating the Loyola Community (ComLoy), from the 1980s until the eve of the canonical erection of that institute, in 1994, exercised the power in such an abusive way that she has just been heavily penalized for it.

7MARGENS is in a position to ensure that a disciplinary decree of June 21 issued a “formal reprimand” to Sister Ivanka Hosta, for her behavior within the Loyola Community “in exercising a style of government that is harmful to the dignity and rights of each one of the nuns who are part of it.”

One formal reprimand and three penalties

The decree is signed by Daniele Libanori, Jesuit and auxiliary bishop of the Diocese of Rome, who, in addition to collecting and examining testimonies and statements about Ivanka Hosta, was also the commissioner in charge, in October 2020, of investigating the path and situation of the Loyola Community. The report was completed in July 2022 and, as far as we know, delivered to the Dicastery for Religious Life. Inexplicably, it has not been the subject of a statement by the Curia until now.

In addition to the reprimand, the decree imposed three penalties on Ivanka Hosta:

1) Prohibition of assuming any government position or function, as well as spiritual direction within the Loyola Community;

2) Establishment of residence in the community that this institute has in Portugal and prohibition of contacting, directly or indirectly, with the nuns or former nuns of the Loyola Community for a period of three years (measure subject to biannual application report by the superior in Portugal); It is

3) As an “external penance”, make a pilgrimage once a month, for a year, to a Marian shrine that is easily accessible from your residence, where you must pray “for the victims of the behavior of Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik and for all the nuns of the Loyola Community”, which she is accused of having abused.

According to Vatican sources, it was already after delivering the report on ComLoy that the Bishop was confronted with the existence of a certain volume of testimonies with content considered serious regarding the actions of Sister Ivanka, which has been from 1994 until now, with With the exception of a lapse of time, the superior general (or Prima Sorella Responsabile – first responsible sister, as she is formally titled): with the arrival of the commissioner on the scene, her functions were suspended; and with the penalty now decided, she is excluded from the position.

How did you obtain this?

The document we had access to – which does not contain any indication of confidentiality, but whose content was not publicly disclosed – contains important elements for understanding the path of that Community over the last three decades.

Booklet of Constitutions 

The Booklet of the Community's Constitutions refers to the year 1982 as the year of “first steps” and 1985 as the year of “fundamental directions”.

It is necessary, however, to contextualize. The origins of the Loyola Community must be traced back to the first half of the 1980s, in Slovenia, when the fall of the Berlin Wall was not yet anticipated. At that time, Marko Ivan Rupnik was in his 30s and became involved in a clandestine movement that was at the origins of the Christian Life Communities, a movement linked to the Jesuits, in that country. The idea of a female religious institute inspired by Ignatius of Loyola began to take shape. In the second half of the decade, Rupnik could be found, for example, at youth meetings at the Stella Matutina Institute, in the Italian city of Gorizia, on the Slovenian border, and it is said that, even then, he was involved in breaking up relationships of dating, to, in one fell swoop, recruit pregnant women for ComLoy and candidates for the Jesuits.

A chronology included in the booklet of the Community's Constitutions refers to the year 1982 as the year of the “first steps” and 1985 as the year in which a first document of “fundamental lines” of its religious life was written, which would come to know several versions in the following years.

The first group of “recruited” women to take vows before the Archbishop of Ljubljana, Alojzij Sustar, appeared in 1991. Three years earlier, some more involved in the process had already done so, too. A second group of 20 other candidates took vows in 1993.

All the testimonies from former members of ComLoy, made public in recent months, lead us to conclude that, in these years in which the Community has been taking shape, the determining figure is Marko Rupnik. Without having any official position, he acquires power through lectures, spiritual direction and, above all, the fact that several, if not many of the young women who are enthusiastic about this project, come through the hand and indication of this then young Jesuit priest, some of them from Italy.

Several of the testimonies from former sisters who have recently denounced Rupnik's abuse state that he was, in fact, the leader of the nuns. The priest consolidated among them the idea that Sister Ivanka was the one who had the charisma, but that she entrusted him with leadership. These reports agree on one point: the abuses, now widely known, began in the late 1980s and continued until at least 1993-1994.

Loyola Community

In 1993, conflict between Ivanka and Rupnik spread to the Loyola Community and led to the creation of two groups.

In 1993, a fateful event occurred for the future of the Loyola Community. During a trip between Ivanka and Rupnik, a very deep disagreement broke out between the two, for reasons that can be assumed, but that only they themselves will know. The conflict spread to the Community and led to the creation of two groups: one, the majority, that wanted to move forward, around Ivanka, and another that followed Father Rupnik, made up of four sisters. As the Jesuit had, however, decided to create the Aletti Center, they ended up incorporating themselves there. He would remain director of the Centre until 2020, when the first allegations of abuse emerged in the then Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, at which point Maria Campatelli became director, at least formally. Campatelli is one of the former ComLoy, the same one who was received a few days ago in a media audience granted by Pope Francis.

It would seem, then, that, whatever the real reasons, Sister Ivanka Hosta, founder and superior general, freed herself from the factual guardian of the Community and that it could now begin a new life. Especially because, on September 9, 1994, the Congregation for Religious Life gave the canonical green light to the formal existence of this religious institution under diocesan law.

But was it, in fact, like that? What guidance did the “first responsible sister” have given to her government, to now receive the aforementioned penalties? Bishop Libanori's decree will enlighten us.

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