VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) announced Monday that it has appointed a panel of five judges to decide the canonical trial of the disgraced Father Marko Rupnik, who has been accused of sexually, psychologically, and physically abusing numerous people.
The panel of judges, which includes clerics and women, do not hold positions in the Roman Curia, a measure taken to ensure their “independence” in the proceedings, according to an October 13 press release from the DDF.
The DDF’s prefect, Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernández, who infamously authored an obscene book and has contradicted Catholic teaching on sexuality, this summer told journalists that the judges for Rupnik’s case had been selected.
Pope Francis delegated the case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (now the DDF) in 2023, shortly after Fernández had been named its prefect.
Churches around the world and the Vatican have extensively used Rupnik’s distinctive work — which portrays Christ and the saints with large “black hole” eyes — even after credible abuse allegations against him came to light.
Though Rupnik’s alleged abuse is said to be of multiple forms – spiritual, sexual, psychological, physical – the investigation of his abuse is only set to try him under the Vatican’s incoming norms concerning crimes of spiritual abuse.
As extensively reported at LifeSiteNews, Rupnik has been accused of sexually, spiritually, psychologically, and physically abusing nuns as well as male victims. The credibility of the well-documented allegations of Rupnik’s serial abuse is deemed to be “very high” by his former Jesuit superiors.
Alleged victims of the priest have attested that he raped women under his charge, that he told a former nun to get an abortion in case she became pregnant after raping her, and that Rupnik’s sexual abuse is deeply linked to his icons, which used his victims as models.
