An alleged victim of Father Marko Rupnik has spoken out about how she was abused by the priest over thirty years ago.
In an interview with the Italian investigative newspaper Domani, the former nun accused Fr Rupnik of exerting “psycho-spiritual” control over her over a period of nine years. She said he forced her to have sex with him and took her to watch pornographic films.
“Father Marko started slowly and sweetly getting inside my psychological and spiritual world, exploiting my uncertainties and fragility and using my relationship with God to push me into sexual experiences with him,” she told the paper.
The allegations go back to the early 1990s when Father Rupnik was spiritual director of a convent in his native Slovenia which he had founded along with its mother superior Ivanka Hosta. The former nun, now 58, claimed she made her first complaint to the Jesuits in 1994 but that they were ignored.
She claimed that the Jesuits and her superior nuns repeatedly rebuffed her complaints in order to protect Fr Rupnik.
In the interview, the nun claimed Rupnik had groomed her, had sex with her and bullied her into silence during her time in the Slovenian convent between 1987 and 1994.
She claimed Rupnik had asked her and another nun to have sex with him, saying they would replicate the three-way relationship between God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit.
She said she believed Rupnik had abused as many as 20 out of the 41 women present at the convent at the time.
The scandal exploded this past week after the Jesuits admitted that Rupnik had been excommunicated for using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had engaged in sexual activity – an act which is considered to be one of the gravest crimes in the Catholic Church.
Fr Rupnik was apparently excommunicated in May 2020. However later that month the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith lifted the excommunication, allowing Fr Rupnik to continue his ministry.
A year later, the same Congregation decided not to prosecute him for another allegation to do with the sexual and spiritual abuse of a former nun, saying the statute of limitations had expired.
On Sunday, Rupnik’s immediate superior, the Rev. Johan Verschueren, said he wanted to try to clarify some of the questions that have erupted about the case, appealing for anyone with old or new allegations to come forward.
“My main concern in all of this is for those who have suffered, and I invite anyone who wishes to make a new complaint or who wants to discuss complaints already made to contact me,” he said.
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