The Vatican recently decided to remove works from the priest and artist Marko Rupnik (70 years old) from his official digital platforms. This measure, recommended by the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, aims not to hit the victims of the Slovenian artist, accused of sexual, psychological and spiritual abuse. These deletions concern in particular the content illustrated by its mosaics on the site Vatican News. This gesture is part of a context of greater vigilance displayed by the Church, while Rupnik is currently the subject of a canonical trial initiated in 2024 by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of Faith.
The charges against Marko Rupnik date back to the 1980s and extend over more than three decades. According to the testimonies gathered, the Jesuit priest has attacked between twenty and thirty women, mainly nuns. In 1982, he co -founded the Loyola community, exclusively female in Ljubljana, in which he would have exercised a spiritual and psychological grip to abuse his members. Using his religious authority, he would have justified his actions by theological arguments, plunging his victims in deep moral confusion. These abuses have continued beyond the community, highlighting a systemic predation.
Mosaics produced by Marko Rupnik on the facade of the Notre-Dame du Rosary basilica in Lourdes.
In addition to its religious trajectory, Rupnik has become a figure in contemporary sacred art. His aesthetic language, strongly inspired by Byzantine iconography, combines stylization of forms and theological symbolism. He notably produced the facade of the Rosary at the Basilica of Lourdes, where five mosaics illustrate the luminous mysteries of Christ. His works also adorn sanctuaries in Rome, Washington, Fatima and Damascus. The Aletti Center, which he has run since 1995, founded in Rome by John Paul II, served him as a platform to disseminate his artistic influence and train young creators from a theological perspective.
The disciplinary consequences against Rupnik have accelerated in recent years. Already briefly excommunicated in 2020 for having absolved a woman with whom he had sexual relation, he was suspended from his functions in 2022 by the Jesuit Order, then definitively expelled from the Company of Jesus in June 2023. This exclusion was followed by the lifting of the canonical prescription which protected him until then. The trial currently underway, led by an independent court, constitutes an unprecedented step in the treatment of abuse affairs in the Catholic Church, despite the maintenance of a certain opacity.
The question of maintaining Rupnik’s works in sacred space is now debated. In Lourdes, the mosaics he made on the rosary basilica will not be dismantled, but they will no longer be lit at night, and some are now covered with panels. Other sanctuaries, such as those of Fatima or San Giovanni Rotondo, reflect on similar measures. If no directive has been decreed by the Vatican, the general trend is to symbolic distance, without physical erasure. A way, for the Church, to respond to the crisis without triggering an erasure of its contemporary heritage.
