VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican’s in-house news outlet has once again used an image by disgraced Father Marko Rupnik to celebrate the feast of St. Joseph, despite Rupnik’s images described as intrinsically linked to his alleged serial sexual abuse.
Visitors to the Vatican News website for the feast of St. Joseph on March 19 will encounter an image of the saint made by Rupnik. The image is very clearly one of Rupnik’s, being created in his recognizable and now notorious style.
Vatican News, under the umbrella of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, uses Rupnik’s images for a wide variety of feasts throughout the liturgical year. They are found both in the Saint of the Day section of the website, and also on the Liturgical Feasts section, with both sections featuring his artwork throughout the entire year in an annually recurring cycle.
This is due to an official decision made by the dicastery in 2023, during which officials decided “there was nothing to prevent the continued use of Rupnik’s mosaics. They said the work should stand on its own merits and be dissociated from the personal life of the artist.”
READ: Vatican to continue promoting Rupnik’s images despite link to his alleged sex abuse
The dicastery is responsible for the Pontifical Council for Social Communications, the Holy See Press Office, the Vatican Internet Service, Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Centre, L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican Printing Press, the Photo Service, and the Vatican Publishing House.
A key aide and member of Rupnik’s Rome-based Aletti art center is believed to be highly influential in the decision. Natasa Govekar is listed as the director of the Dicastery for Communications’ Theological-Pastoral Department. She is also a member of Rupnik’s Aletti Center, where she works on the “theology of images.”
Her presence has been key at the dicastery since its inception, and she is responsible for monitoring and operating the Pope’s Instagram and X accounts. She has for many years been welcomed as a keynote speaker at conferences on Catholic journalism, due to her leading role at the Vatican.
The scandal comes from the images themselves
Rupnik’s images have been described as intimately linked to his alleged serial abuse – abuse which is stated to be sexual, spiritual, physical, and psychological.
Gloria Branciani – a former member of his religious community an and alleged victim – said Rupnik’s “sexual obsession was not extemporaneous but deeply connected to his conception of art and his theological thinking.”
He has been accused by a number of alleged victims of having demanded sexual threesomes to imitate the Trinity, and of forcing religious sisters to drink his semen from a chalice.
Victims have alleged that Rupnik made sexual advances during painting sessions, after offering Mass or after hearing confessions in his Rome Aletti Art Center.
READ: ‘Have an abortion’: Alleged Rupnik victims detail abuse as Vatican slowly investigates
Indeed, in the latest shocking allegations made against Rupnik, Branciani said on Italian TV recently that Rupnik would demand her presence in the room while he painted: but that he painted naked from the waist down and sexually excited. She stated:
He invited me very often because he said that I could model him. I can tell you that when he also painted, perhaps naked from the waist down, he was excited; therefore, his painting was linked precisely to physical excitement. At the end of the first confession, he hugged me for a long time.
After being forced into sexual intercourse with Rupnik, Branciani recounts he told her to have an abortion if she became pregnant:
Full intercourse only happened once, one of his attempts, he threw himself on me and I stopped him and said, “But I could also get pregnant” and he said, “But if it’s all a game, you can also have an abortion like a game.” I was just devastated so I didn’t even react anymore.
Rupnik has been accused of sexually and spiritually abusing numerous people, including nuns and male victims. The former Jesuit was also excommunicated for absolving a sexual accomplice in confession but subsequently had the penalty revoked – with much speculation over whether Pope Francis personally intervened to swiftly lift the excommunication.
The credibility of the well-documented allegations of Rupnik’s serial abuse is deemed to be “very high” by his former Jesuit superiors.
After international outcry, Pope Francis was essentially shamed into announcing in October 2023 that Rupnik was subject to a reopened investigation by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) for abuse.
But that case has dragged on, and now over 500 days later there is still no end in sight.
READ: Is Fr. Rupnik, accused of sexual abuse, now staying in a convent with nuns outside Rome?
Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, whose DDF is leading the investigation, said in January that it was proceeding but that there are other cases “more serious” but less publicly known.
More recently, a Vatican source attested that Rupnik will soon be tried under the DDF’s incoming norms concerning crimes of spiritual abuse. “The sentence is expected in the not too distant future,” the source told OSV News.
If true, Rupnik would appear to be facing no trial or charges for his sexual, physical, or psychological abuse, or his pressure on Branciani to allegedly procure an abortion if she became pregnant after he raped her.
In fact, since the Rupnik scandal broke into the public light in December 2022 he has received continued promotion and signal favor from the Vatican and also from Pope Francis, who has been seen to keep two Rupnik images in his own rooms.
Indeed, in 2018 Francis said that one of the Rupnik images was a personal gift from the favored priest.
Those who have followed this sorry saga as it has unfolded should not be surprised at the Vatican’s continued use of Rupnik art – only outraged.
