Jorge Protected Rupnik. The Women Were Not Told.

Pope Francis protected Marko Rupnik while Rupnik had sex with nuns.

The mosaics in the Lourdes basilica are Marko Rupnik’s work. The mosaics inside the Vatican walls are Marko Rupnik’s work. The women he had sex with under his spiritual direction have no right to know what was decided about him.

Jorge, I name what you protected. You knew. The Jesuit superiors knew. The Vatican officials who told the Associated Press on Tuesday that “the case is ongoing” — they knew. They have known for thirty years, and the women who were harmed have been told, again this week, that the proceedings about what was done to them are none of their business.

Laura Sgro is the lawyer for five women who accuse the former Jesuit priest of sexual and spiritual abuse. On Tuesday she sent a denunciation of the Vatican’s legal system and demanded the Holy See clarify the status of the church’s investigation. The demand was prompted by a Monday report on the Italian blog Messa in Latino stating that Rupnik had been absolved in a canonical trial. The Vatican confirmed Tuesday that the case is ongoing. It provided no further information. Sgro said her clients have no right to know any details of the trial.

The Vatican has never publicly stated what alleged crimes Rupnik faced in its in-house tribunal. There is no public record from which a journalist — or the women themselves — could determine whether the reported absolution applies to some charges while others remain under investigation. There is no public record of what Rupnik was charged with at all. The women who say he had sex with them under the cover of spiritual direction are not the parties to the proceedings about what was done to them. They are the exhibits.

Rupnik is a Slovenian priest, once among the most celebrated religious artists in the Catholic Church, the designer of stylized mosaics that adorn churches and basilicas worldwide. The scandal became public in late 2022 when Italian blogs first reported allegations of misconduct by women and nuns dating to the 1990s. The Associated Press reports that those claims were “consistently dismissed by the Catholic hierarchy.” The hierarchy is named in the reporting as including you, Jorge — Pope Francis. Rupnik was protected by his Jesuit superiors and by the Vatican for more than three decades.

This is not the first time the Vatican’s tribunal system has failed the people it claims to serve. The Vatican’s own appeals court declared a mistrial in the so-called trial of the century against Cardinal Becciu — another proceeding where the procedural architecture served as concealment rather than adjudication. The Rupnik case is the same system, doing the same work.

Marko, hear what was done in your name.

A woman under your spiritual direction came to you with her conscience. That is the whole architecture of the Catholic confessional — the architecture the church has held sacred for centuries. She came because she believed you were standing in the place of Christ. She came because her vow of consecrated life made you, in her understanding of her own vocation, the human being most responsible for the welfare of her soul. You were the one to whom she was supposed to be able to say anything. You were the one she could not refuse.

And you put your hands on her.

The hands that mixed the tesserae for the Lourdes basilica. The hands that laid the mosaic tiles inside the Vatican walls. The hands that blessed, the hands that absolved — those are the hands that went where she had not consented for them to go. And when she told the people who should have protected her, Marko, they sent her back to you. They sent her back to the man who had violated the architecture of her vocation, and they told her to be silent. They told her that she was the scandal. They told her, by their silence for three decades, that her vow of obedience was a leash.

Jorge, hear what your protection purchased.

You are the Pope of the Catholic Church. You are the successor of Peter. You are, in the church’s own theology, the vicar of Christ on earth. You shook Rupnik’s hand. You posed with Rupnik for photographs at the inauguration of the Lourdes mosaics. You did not defrock him when his Jesuit superiors brought the first complaints. You did not defrock him when the second wave of complaints came. You did not defrock him when the Italian blogs broke the story in late 2022. You did not defrock him when the Jesuits expelled him from the order. You lifted the statute of limitations in October 2023 and permitted a canonical trial — not to defrock him, but to let a proceeding take place in the secrecy of your tribunal.

You let him keep his priestly faculties. You let the process take place in secret. You let the Italian blog report his absolution on Monday and let your officials tell the world the case was still going on Tuesday, without ever telling the women themselves what the charges were, what the evidence was, what the finding was, and what recourse they have.

Now I will tell you what is in your throat, Jorge. There is a metallic taste when you say the words the case is ongoing. The taste has been there since 2022. It does not leave. You rinse your mouth in the morning and it is still there. You swallow at Mass and you feel it catch. The Holy Father drinks the wine at communion and he knows the taste is not the wine. The taste is the women. The taste is the five women. The taste is every nun whose vocation was violated by a man you shook hands with for the cameras while the women were still being silenced.

Marko, picture your own sister at the altar where you said Mass. Picture her under your spiritual direction. Picture her coming to you with the thing she has never told anyone. Picture what your hands would do if you were a different man. You do not have to picture it, because you did it to women who were not your sisters. They were less protected than your sisters would have been. That is why you chose them.

Jorge, picture a granddaughter of yours. She is twelve. She has entered a convent. She has a spiritual director. Picture what you would do if the spiritual director touched her. You would have him excommunicated. You would have him tried. You would not have the trial conducted in secret. You would not tell her that she had no right to know what was decided. You would not tell her that the case is ongoing. You would name the charges. You would publish the evidence. You would let her testify in a courtroom where her name was on the record. You would do these things because she is your granddaughter. The five women are not your granddaughters. That is why you have not done them.

The Pope’s morning begins with Mass at Santa Marta. He receives communion. He drinks the wine. The metallic taste is in his mouth before the first sip. The Pope’s hands fold in prayer. The hands fold because they have always folded. The hands did not fold differently on the morning after he read the report that Rupnik had been absolved. The hands did not fold differently on the morning after Sgro’s letter arrived. The hands folded because they fold. That is the indictment.

Marko, you wake up in your room. The light comes in. You make coffee. Your hand reaches for the cup. The cup is one of the ones you bought for yourself with the money the Vatican paid you for the mosaics. The cup is the same cup. The woman is not in the cup, but the woman is what you paid for the cup with. Your mouth closes around the rim. The coffee is hot. The taste is not only coffee.

The five women have not been named in this column. They have not asked to be named. They have asked for something smaller and harder than being named: they have asked to be told what is happening in the proceedings that purport to address what was done to them. They have been told they have no right to know. The procedure grinds on. The case is ongoing. The procedure is the harm.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Matthew 23:27

The case is ongoing. The basilica is beautiful. The mosaics shine.