VATICAN CITY (RNS) — A former nun in Slovenia, considered one of 5 witnesses within the intercourse abuse trial of the Rev. Marko Rupnik, an ex-Jesuit priest and artist, just lately detailed what she claims was sexual and psychological abuse that Rupnik subjected her to for years.
The lady, who spoke to Faith Information Service on the situation that she could be recognized as Klara, belonged to the Loyola group of Mengeš, which Rupnik co-founded. The allegations in opposition to Rupnik, an influential determine within the church whose paintings is displayed in additional than 200 sacred websites around the globe, has prompted complaints from Catholics concerning the continued lack of accountability within the church, in addition to the underreporting of sexual, psychological and bodily abuse of spiritual sisters.
Whereas Rupnik’s trial continues on the Vatican, the Jesuit order expelled Rupnik in 2023.
Klara mentioned she met Rupnik in 1980, when she was a 16-year-old intern at a clinic in Slovenia the place Rupnik was being handled. The 2 began speaking about her Catholic religion, and he invited her to affix conferences of the Christian Life Neighborhood, a lay affiliation that follows the religious ideas of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founding father of the Jesuit order.
She mentioned Rupnik took an lively position within the conferences, instructing its two dozen members — principally younger folks from the Slovenian countryside — on the Catholic religion and theology. “He was a person who knew how to attract folks in,” Klara mentioned, “and he knew that he had a terrific energy even when it got here to influencing folks’s psychology.”
Klara mentioned Rupnik’s educating generally strayed from official Catholic doctrine and that he would instill doubts about her vocation with Ignatian approaches to decision-making and discernment. Regardless of the doubt he nurtured, she mentioned, Rupnik inspired her to start the method of changing into a nun.
“The yr earlier than becoming a member of the group I had an engagement proposal from a person whom I had recognized for just a few years,” Klara mentioned. In 1987, the nuns of the group urged her to go to Rome, the place Rupnik generally lived, to speak to him about her doubts. She claimed that Rupnik advised her sternly as they walked in a Roman park that if she didn’t select to be part of the group, she was selecting to not have Christ in her life.
Saying she “was already so subjugated at the moment,” she mentioned she accepted that changing into a nun was her solely selection. She stayed at a home in Ljubljana with one other novice not removed from the Jesuit home. Klara mentioned that Rupnik would generally go to for dinner. “He began telling me that I used to be lacking one thing, that he was — so to talk — my savior, that he would give me what I used to be lacking,” she mentioned.
She alleged that Rupnik repeatedly invited her into the lavatory the place he was masturbating and requested her to carry out oral intercourse on him, Klara mentioned. “He would all the time say that he solely did this for me,” she mentioned, however Klara believed that different girls had additionally had the identical advances. After the abuse, “he would all the time repeat to me: ‘you will need to by no means communicate of this with anybody,’” Klara mentioned. “From that very first second I used to be overtaken by worry, and I didn’t dare to talk.”
In September 1987, Klara mentioned, she joined the group. She was invited to assist Rupnik information the religious workout routines for youth teams, and he or she claimed he would usually invite her into his room the place, she mentioned, he would abuse her sexually. Sooner or later, whereas listening to the sisters’ confessions, Rupnik advised Klara he wish to have one other girl be a part of for intercourse, Klara advised RNS.
“He spoke to me about threesomes, and he mentioned he had had experiences with different girls,” Klara mentioned. Two years after she joined the group, Klara mentioned she was advised to go to Rome to go to a lady who lived in southern Italy and was an in depth buddy of Rupnik.
“One evening, throughout dinner, she put a chalice in the midst of the desk and advised me that it might be fantastic if it contained Rupnik’s sperm and the 2 us may … drink it,” Klara mentioned. “I used to be so shocked when she advised me these items, and I imagined them … it was an entire horror inside me and I froze. I later understood that Rupnik despatched me there to persuade me to have a threesome with him.”
Klara mentioned that her surprised response made it clear that she was not . “From that second on, I used to be nugatory to him,” she mentioned.
Marko Rupnik in a video from 2022. (Video display screen seize)
Through the religious workout routines on the group, believers are requested to look deep inside themselves and into their motivations. Klara mentioned she started to ponder all the pieces that had occurred to her. “Throughout that point all the pieces emerged, and I felt that I now not knew what was incorrect and what was proper, what’s ethical and what’s immoral, what church educating is legitimate and what isn’t,” she mentioned. Klara mentioned she requested to satisfy with Rupnik and confront him concerning the alleged bodily and psychological abuse.
“After saying all of this, he checked out me and mentioned: ‘I don’t know what you might be speaking about. I don’t know something, it’s your drawback.’ I used to be so pained and surprised at that second, that somebody may play with you, use you after which faux it by no means occurred,” Klara mentioned.
When she returned to the group, Klara mentioned she felt as if she have been an outcast. She described the group as a spot the place acquiring the favor of the mom superior, Sr. Ivanka Hosta, was the one solution to have entry to training or primary requirements. For the following 5 years, Klara labored in faculties and hospitals, finally rising to go nurse in a hospital in Jerusalem, regardless of her lack of expertise within the discipline.
When she returned to Slovenia, she confessed her sense of being disoriented and sad locally to a priest, who instructed she ought to depart. In 1999, she left the group and wrote a letter to Hosta stating, “I had entered the group due to Rupnik, and I left it for me, for my life.”
On Oct. 20, 2023, the diocese of Ljubljana introduced the group was being shut down “because of grave points relating to the train of authority and coexistence locally.” That very same yr, Pope Francis lifted the statute of limitations on the crimes Rupnik was accused of, permitting Vatican prosecutors to start an investigation and trial. Rupnik has not made a public assertion responding to the fees; the Vatican has mentioned that it considers him harmless till proved responsible
Klara joined different witnesses, Gloria Branciani, Mirjam Kovac and Sr. Samuelle (who has not made her final identify public), in denouncing Rupnik and the tradition of abuse within the Loyola group. The ladies have been interviewed by the Vatican concerning the case, however they don’t seem to be knowledgeable concerning the present state of the trial.
In a letter despatched on March 25 to twenty girls who suffered alleged abuse by Rupnik, the Jesuit order supplied to start out “a technique of therapeutic.” Holy websites around the globe are contemplating whether or not to cowl or take away the mosaics of the disgraced artist, however to date solely the Marian shrine at Lourdes and the St. John Paul II Nationwide Shrine in Washington, D.C., have complied.
