Over the past week came another positive indicator of Pope Leo’s emergent style of quiet but firm leadership. It occurred with the sudden but long overdue removal of the artwork of a Slovenian priest who has become notorious, as had Pope Francis’ protection of him.
The priest is Fr. Marko Rupnik. He has been accused of abuse by roughly two dozen women, mostly former nuns. They have accused him of spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse over the course of three decades. Rupnik’s behavior was so bad that even the Jesuits expelled him (no small achievement) in June 2023 for his “stubborn refusal to observe the vow of obedience.”
Pope Leo seems to be willing to draw the line where Francis did not. And befitting his quieter style, he seems to have made a significant change silently but firmly.
Nonetheless, he was reportedly protected by the world’s top Jesuit, Pope Francis. Enraged Catholics called for Rupnik to be put on trial, removed from the priesthood altogether, and for his artwork to be taken down — at the very least removed from Vatican websites, where it was often displayed. For instance, digital images of Rupnik’s work were frequently used by the website Vatican News to illustrate descriptions of the Church’s liturgical feast days. Likewise, the Dicastery for Communication website featured images of the priest’s work.
The Jesuit priest’s artwork has been featured not only at official Vatican sites but at shrines and chapels around the world, including the National Shrine of St. John Paul II in Washington, D.C., the basilica at Our Lady of Lourdes in France, and the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Vatican’s Apostolic Palace, where it had been commissioned by Pope John Paul II in 1996. Many of these sacred places removed or covered up Rupnik’s art as allegations surfaced about him.
Part of the debate over Rupnik’s art is about the nature of art itself. Some voices argue that it’s wrong to punish the art. The artist might be guilty of terrible misconduct, but should his art be canceled based on his misdeeds?
This is certainly a legitimate question. In fact, take it a step further in American culture today: Witness how the revolutionaries of cancel culture ripped down statues of everyone from Columbus to Washington to Jefferson, from Stonewall Jackson to Saint Junipero Serra, from Lincoln to Ulysses S. Grant to even — good grief — Frederick Douglass. The spirit of the Left is that if one man’s particular sin meets their mighty disapproval, then remove the man.
As for Fr. Rupnik, there are no statues or portraits of his person. Rather, it is Rupnik’s art that’s being targeted for cancellation. That does seem to beg the question: If Rupnik’s art must be removed not because of the art but because of the sins of the man, then what work of other artists is fair game for removal?
Was Caravaggio without sin?
That comparison is made by Fr. Raymond de Souza, who notes that Caravaggio was “guilty of slander and vandalism, a hot temper, and eventually convicted of murder during a duel in Rome, after which he became a fugitive.” And yet, “Caravaggio’s splendid works adorn Italy to this day, and are often used for spiritual reflections.”
They sure are. Of course, as de Souza notes, “An immediate response might be that Father Rupnik is not Caravaggio; the world can suffer the loss of Father Rupnik’s art but not the work of one of the greatest painters ever to live.”
Sure, but here’s where the controversy with Rupnik’s art gets particularly ugly. As de Souza notes, “While the Vatican courts have not yet managed to hold a trial for Father Rupnik, there is a widespread consensus — based on the claims of dozens of women — that he sexually coerced women in his religious community as part of the process of creating his paintings and mosaics. The term ‘rape art’ has thus been used to characterize Father Rupnik’s work.”
Whoa. Yes, “rape art.” That’s quite vile. If such claims are accurate, then they surely merit the removal of such grotesquely inspired work, certainly from Vatican websites. Removing a work of “art” affixed to the side of a church stonewall takes some effort, but deleting it from a website is pretty damned easy.
And it’s the “rape” element that’s at the core of the indictment of Rupnik’s work. Consider this from an incensed writer at the usually mild-mannered Crux website:
Rupnik allegedly abused his victims as part of his “creative process” — a fact survivors, victim-advocates, and observers from across the spectrum of opinion in the Church say makes Rupnik’s abuse inseparable from his “art” works…. Some victims and advocates have called Rupnik’s work “rape art” and many have called for its removal from sacred space.
To repeat: This linking of Rupnik’s “creative process” to “rape” is an extraordinary claim. I’m certainly no aficionado of the man nor an expert on his work, though I have seen many images of it, and it is hard to imagine that when the disgraced Jesuit priest was doing conventional representations of, say, the face of Jesus or the Blessed Mother, he was inspired by rape. If he was, then the man is quite the sicko. If put on trial, perhaps he could tell us. That is, if he wasn’t being shielded by the pope.
That brings me back to my theme at the start of this article: the pope.
Popes are not artists. They are moral leaders. They are shepherds of the flock. And that Catholic flock was badly wounded and still suffers the scars — some of them fresh and anew and ongoing — of sexual abuse by clergy. Most of the abuse has been homosexual priests preying on boys. Rupnik’s alleged predatory behavior relates to adult women — celibate nuns. It’s different from the pederasty we’ve seen in the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, it is sexual abuse. And it must not be tolerated, and the perpetrator not protected.
Under Pope Francis, Rupnik was reportedly protected, despite public outcry. There were demands inside and outside the Church that he and his art be removed.
Among the most influential voices urging that Rupnik images no longer be used by the Vatican has been American Cardinal Sean O’Malley, the founding president of Pope Francis’ own Commission for the Protection of Minors. O’Malley says that “pastoral prudence would prevent displaying artwork in a way that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense of or indicate indifference to the pain and suffering of so many victims of abuse.” O’Malley a year ago urged the removal of the images, with no action taken by Francis and his allies.
But that has suddenly changed, under a new pope, Leo XIV.
What unfolded over the last week was poignantly captured by Veteran Catholic writer John Grondelski, who thoughtfully linked the new pope’s action to the important feast day at hand: “Yesterday [Monday, June 9] was the Memorial of Mary, Mother of the Church, a relatively new feast for a very old theological reality,” wrote Grondelski of this new feast day created by Pope Francis. “Until last Saturday, the Vatican News website was still featuring [for the feast day] the work of Marko Rupnik, the notorious abuser of nearly thirty religious women, who still somehow functions as a priest, seemingly protected by someone high up in Rome.”
The “someone high up” was assumed to be the previous pope. As Grondelski put it, “the biggest cover-up of Rupnik was in Francis’s Vatican.”
But at last, the protection has finally, suddenly, quietly come to an end, after over a year of uproar under Francis.
“Sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning, his work disappeared,” noted Grondelski, “replaced by a mosaic similar to the ‘Mater Ecclesiae’ mosaic looking down on St. Peter’s Square, erected by Pope St. John Paul II in gratitude to Our Lady for saving his life from an assassin’s bullet.”
Such a replacement was long overdue. And Leo surely was responsible for the sudden change.
Crux put it this way: “Images of artwork created by a disgraced celebrity cleric accused of serial sexual and other abuse have disappeared from official Vatican Media websites without explanation, almost a year after the head of the Vatican’s communications outfit strongly defended his department’s continued use of the images even in the face of sustained public outcry.”
Crux asked Matteo Bruni, the Vatican’s press office director, who ordered this “complete policy reversal.” Crux did not get an answer, but did speculate: “Observers have already noted, however, that the removal of the Rupnik images came hot on the heels of Pope Leo’s meeting with O’Malley and officials of the Commission for the Protection of Minors, which took place on Thursday of last week.”
Indeed it had.
This was a sharp shift, noted Crux, as officials “had no indication the change would be taking place” under Francis or even prior to the Leo meeting with Cardinal O’Malley. One Vatican official told Crux that Rupnik “was protected by Pope Francis,” and added that “things are changing” under Pope Leo.
They sure are.
The Italian Catholic source La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana (The New Daily Compass) was even clearer about the immediate Leo effect, with journalist Nico Spuntoni reporting: “just hours after Leo XIV granted an audience to the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Vatican News hastily ‘cleaned up’ its websites of images of the works of the accused priest. This marks a clear U-turn from the stance taken by the head of the communications department at a conference in the U.S. last year.” Spuntoni concludes: “It is hard not to attribute this turnaround to the election of Leo XIV and the persistence of O’Malley, who has also publicly reprimanded Francis on several occasions in recent years.”
Given the pains of the Church’s scandalous sex-abuse crisis, the Holy Father ought to be more concerned about moral crimes against humanity than nuances of “artistic expression.” Pope Leo seems to be willing to draw the line where Francis did not. And befitting his quieter style, he seems to have made a significant change silently but firmly.
This is yet another early sign of a very different Chief Shepherd in the Chair of St. Peter. The flock seems grateful.
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