Pledge your prayers and fasting for protection of the Church during the Synod on Synodality HERE

VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — Catholics have expressed outrage as the official website of the Synod on Synodality has been discovered to use images designed by the disgraced ex-Jesuit and alleged serial abuser Father Marko Rupnik.

In recent days, numerous Catholics have taken to online social media platforms to condemn the Synod on Synodality for giving a platform to Fr. Rupnik’s artwork.

On the English version of the Synod on Synodality’s homepage, an image of Rupnik’s was used to promote a post urging readers to “Pray for unity, pray for the synod.”

The image had been online for some time, but after the heightened interest and criticism in recent days, it was removed during the late afternoon (local time) of September 27.

Rupnik was automatically excommunicated by the Vatican in 2020 after the Dicastery (formerly Congregation) for the Doctrine of the Faith (DDF) unanimously ruled he was guilty of absolving one of his sexual accomplices. He subsequently had the penalty swiftly revoked – with much speculation over whether Pope Francis personally intervened to swiftly lift the excommunication.

Separately, Rupnik has been accused of serial abuse of multiple kinds – ranging from spiritual to sexual – against women and at least one man. The abuse is alleged to have taken place against at least 21 of the 40-strong Loyola Community of religious women, which he co-founded in his native Slovenia. A further 15 alleged victims have come forward in the past ten months. 

Another Rupnik image still remains on the English version of the Synod site, forming the background of a prayer for the Synod. 

LifeSite contacted the Synod media office asking for clarification on why the image was used, but did not receive a response by the time of publication. 

Rupnik’s abuse is reported to have taken place in his Rome-based art center, the Aletti Center, from which he conducted international commissions of his work. One of his alleged victims gave detailed testimony stating how his artwork was intimately linked to his abuse. 

She said that “his sexual obsession was not extemporaneous but deeply connected to his conception of art and his theological thinking.”

READ: Vatican to continue promoting Rupnik’s images despite link to his alleged sex abuse

Rupnik was expelled from the Jesuits during the summer, with the order citing his refusal to comply with restrictions placed upon him as the reason for his discharge. Despite this and the intimate link between his alleged abuse and his art, Rupnik has continued to enjoy regular promotion at the Vatican and by Pope Francis himself. 

The Diocese of Rome recently attempted to rehabilitate the priest by casting doubt on the process of excommunication. The diocesan statement added that the Aletti Center was home to “a healthy community life without particular critical issues,” even though it was a center of Rupnik’s alleged abuse.

This statement by the Diocese of Rome caused widespread outrage amongst many who had been following the saga, which broke into public reports last December. But chiefly angered by the statement was a group of Rupnik’s alleged victims.

READ: Fr. Rupnik’s alleged victims accuse Pope Francis of ‘empty’ rhetoric responding to sexual abuse  

They argued that the statement penalized the victims, while exculpating Rupnik:

the victims have therefore been censured for not being discreet, but exposing something repugnant: their pain, the manipulation of those who circumvented them in the name of Christ, of spiritual love, of the Trinity. They exposed their pain because the manipulation and abuse hurt their dignity forever.

The Diocese of Rome’s report about the center “exonerates” Rupnik’s collaborators of “any responsibility,” protested the signatories. As such, it “ridicules the pain of the victims but also of the whole church, mortally wounded by such ostentatious hubris.”

Following a recent plenary session, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors issued a call to the Synod on Synodality’s participants to address sexual abuse. Published the same day the Synod website quietly removed one of Rupnik’s images, the statement calls for the Synod to “address, in a comprehensive way, the threat posed by sexual abuse to Church’s credibility in announcing the Gospel.”

But Rupnik’s continued promotion at the Vatican and by the Synod office is not unexpected. The Dicastery for Communications has officially decided to continue using his religious images, despite their link to his alleged abuse.

Such promotion is likely due in part to Natasa Govekar, a member of the Aletti Center, where she works on the “theology of images,” and who is also listed as the director of the Dicastery for Communications’ Theological-Pastoral Department.

Rupnik also wielded incredible influence in his own right, both amongst the Vatican’s curial bodies but also in the Diocese of Rome. 

The Diocese of Rome regularly focused on Rupnik and his artwork in its videos and also posted videos of Rupnik himself while he was supposed to be under restrictions. Rupnik also preached at a clergy retreat in May last year and at another retreat in August 2022; both took place while his case was under scrutiny at the DDF.

Indeed, he preached a papal retreat to the Pope and the Vatican curia in March 2020, weeks after the Vatican’s DDF had unanimously decided that Rupnik incurred automatic excommunication for absolving a sexual accomplice.  

Pledge your prayers and fasting for protection of the Church during the Synod on Synodality HERE