Editor’s note: The following article contains disturbing detail that is likely to be distressing. Discretion is advised. 

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Jesuit Curia has contacted alleged victims of former Jesuit Father Marko Rupnik, initiating a dialogue process to facilitate their healing.

Alleged victims of the disgraced Fr. Rupnik have been offered the opportunity to engage with the Jesuits – Rupnik’s religious community until 2023 – in “a reparation process aimed at healing the wounds.”

Details emerged via a Religion Digital report that stated a letter from Father Johan Verschueren, SJ – the delegate general of the Jesuits in Rome – was issued to alleged victims of Rupnik on Tuesday. Verschueren confirmed the authenticity of the letter to LifeSiteNews.

The letter stated that the Jesuits were not “comfortable” with the current state of the Rupnik affair and added that “to the various forms of violence suffered at the time, was added the suffering due to the lack of listening and justice for many years.”

Verschueren’s letter expressed “the confidence that a process of healing and inner reconciliation is possible, provided that there is also a path of truth and recognition on our part,” Religion Digital reported.

Verschueren is Rupnik’s former superior who issued the decree expelling Rupnik from the Jesuits in July 2023, citing Rupnik’s refusal to obey his superiors.

As extensively reported at LifeSiteNews, Rupnik has been accused of sexually, spiritually, psychologically and physically abusing numerous people, including nuns and 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.

He was also excommunicated for absolving a sexual accomplice in confession but subsequently had the penalty very swiftly revoked – with much speculation over whether Pope Francis personally intervened to lift the excommunication.

The Vatican investigation that Francis was effectively shamed into launching has now been underway for over 500 days, and though officials have argued that progress is being made and judges being selected, the protracted nature of the case has angered many.

Angered by this continued delay, some of the most public alleged victims of Rupnik appeared on Italian TV recently to reveal further allegations against him.

READ: ‘Have an abortion’: Alleged Rupnik victims detail abuse as Vatican slowly investigates

They 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 painted his notorious icons naked from the waist down and while sexually excited.

The number of Rupnik’s alleged victims is believed to number well over 20, with victims alleging abuse occurred also in his Jesuit quarters and art studio in Rome.

Commenting on his letter, Verschueren told LifeSite it had been sent to 20 individuals in order to discover “how we can meet their needs.”

“It’s an outstretched hand,” he wrote in a March 26 email, adding that so far there is “nothing concrete” as “a possible path to recovery will depend entirely on the person invited.” Specific details about how the Jesuits would liaise with each person would not be released by the order itself, Verschueren wrote, though the alleged victims remained free to do so.

The Jesuit official described the endeavor as an attempt for the Jesuit order to also change:

We wrote in the letter that we too need repair and healing. We have so much to learn from them, and to do better in the future, to avoid any kind of abuse within the Society of Jesus.

While the Jesuit Order is retroactively looking to assist alleged Rupnik victims, the Vatican is still promoting his artwork in a bizarre paradox. Rupnik’s art has been described as intimately linked to his alleged abuse, but despite this ,the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication officially decided in 2023 that there is no issue with using his images.

Consequently, the Vatican’s online news portals continue with their annual cycle of Rupnik images for various dates in the Church’s liturgical calendar, most recently including the feast of St. Joseph.

According to details shared by a Vatican source who attested that Rupnik will soon be tried under the Vatican’s incoming norms concerning crimes of spiritual abuse, it appears that the priest’s alleged physical, sexual and psychologial abuse might not be examined in the Vatican’s purview. “The sentence is expected in the not too distant future,” the source told OSV News.

The Jesuits’ move to assist alleged victims will no doubt be welcomed as a positive first step, but many questions remain about the Vatican’s continued promotion of Rupnik, Francis’ own involvement and continued promotion of him, and the proper investigation of his alleged serial sexual abuse.