Marko Ivan Rupnik, a Slovenian priest close to Pope Francis, sexually abused at least 20 women, including a nun to whom he proposed to form a sexual threesome that replicated the “Holy Trinity”.
A Jesuit priest, apparently close to Pope Francis, was accused of inviting two nuns to engage in a threesome to replicate the teachings of the “Holy Trinity” and now faces allegations of sexual and spiritual abuse dating back decades.
A former nun claims that Marko Ivan Rupnik used her “psycho-spiritual” control over her some three decades ago to make her watch pornographic movies and have group sex sessions that he claimed had religious significance.
Rupnik, 68, was the spiritual director of a convent in Slovenia and has created mosaics for churches, including a papal chapel in the Vatican.
The former nun told the Italian newspaper Domani that “Father Marko slowly and gently began to intrude into my psychological and spiritual world, exploiting my uncertainties and fragility and using my relationship with God to push me to have sexual experiences with him,” according to the report. Daily Mail newspaper.
She said that during her time in the Slovenian convent, between 1987 and 1994, Rupnik groomed her, had sex with her and intimidated her into silence about his abuse of her.
The former nun also claimed that Rupnik had asked her and another nun to have a threesome with him, saying they would replicate the three-way relationship between God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.
Rupnik abused up to 20 women, said the nun, whose first complaint about the abuse dates back to 1994, but was ignored by Rupnik’s supporters, both in Slovenia and in Rome.
“It was really an abuse of conscience,” she said.
Upon investigation, the women’s claims about Rupnik were found to be true.
The women who had accused Rupnik had “seen their lives ruined by the wrong suffered and by the complicit silence” of the Church, Bishop Daniele Libanori said in a letter Sunday.
He urged Church members who covered up Rupnik’s crimes to “humbly ask the world to forgive the scandal.”
The Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith excommunicated Rupnik in May 2020, then lifted it later that month and refused to prosecute the priest, even after nine women came forward a year later with similar accusations.
The Jesuit-led congregation said the cases were outside the statute of limitations and too old to prosecute because they mainly occurred in the 1990s.