The ex-nun’s confession about Father Rupnik: from threesomes to watching pornographic films in the cinema

Marko Ivan Rupnik, father, Jesuit, theologian and artist, known all over the world, has been at the center of a scandal for the last few days due to allegations of abuse by some nuns. Concrete statements and testimonies, how Fr. Rupnik abused the nuns of the Loyola community, it was not made public until Sunday, when the Italian newspaper Domani published an interview with one of his alleged victims. With the journalist of this left-centered but credible Roman daily under a pseudonym, the former nun vividly talks about everything that allegedly happened in the 1980s and 1990s in Rome and Mengš.

It is about the details of the alleged abuses that are alleged you started in the spiritual realm and continued in the physical, through extreme erotic games and even watching porn movies in Roman cinemas.

In the meantime, the leadership of the Jesuit Order urged any potential victims of Father Rupnik to report.

Anna, the fictitious name of the former Italian nun of the Loyola community, who is now 58 years old, spoke for the aforementioned newspaper. In the interview, she told her nine-year story of agony about the sexual, psychological and spiritual violence she allegedly suffered at the hands of Father Ivan Rupnik.

“He kissed me on the mouth for the first time and told me that he kissed the altar where he celebrated the Eucharist, because only with me could he experience sex as an expression of God’s love.” is one of the sentences Father Rupnik allegedly said to her.

Exploited naivety

In 1985, Anna was 21 years old and a medical student. After graduation, she considered becoming a missionary, but she was also interested in art, and a nun introduced her to a Jesuit painter who had a small studio in the Piazza del Gesù in Rome. “Rupnik was ten years older than me and was in his first year of priesthood. I felt relaxed around him and he immediately became my spiritual leader.”

Even then, in the 1980s, Pater was a star among young Slovenian Jesuits. “He had a strong personal charisma in explaining the gospel and a marked sensitivity in identifying people’s weak points. So he immediately understood my fragility, insecurity and the fears I had.”

Then she began to visit his studio frequently, where she was fascinated by painting, where they became closer through conversation. Rupnik then allegedly began to give meaning to every contact and told her that even a simple handshake or stroking her hand was an opportunity to emphasize her femininity. Also, claims the former nun, he allegedly showed her pictures from the Kamasutra and told her it was art.

When asked if she did not find this unusual, she said that she explained it by the fact that he was an artist. Rupnik wanted her to be his model and asked her to pose for one of his pictures. “It was not difficult to accept and unbutton a few buttons on the blouse. For me, who was naive and inexperienced, it just meant helping a friend. That’s when he kissed me lightly on the mouth and told me that’s how he kissed the altar where he celebrated the Eucharist. I was stunned: On the one hand, I wanted to run away, on the other, Father Marko encouraged me to live this reality, because I am special and it is a gift that the Lord gave only to us; that physical belonging to God can live only with me, without owning anything, in freedom, according to the image of Trinitarian love.”

In the summer of 1986, they met again in his studio, where, according to her, Father Rupnik again wanted her to undress and let him touch her. But then she rejected him, and Rupnik attacked her with very harsh and mean words, saying that she was worthless and that he wanted to end all relations. Afraid of losing him forever, she decided to put her doubts aside and trust him completely. “In the beginning, Father Marko slowly and gently infiltrated my psychological and spiritual world, taking advantage of my insecurities and fragility and at the same time using my relationship with God to encourage me to have sexual experiences with him. At that time, the feeling of being loved … turned into a demand for ever more extreme erotic games in his studio in the Collegio del Gesù in Rome, while he was painting or after celebrating the Eucharist or after confession.”

Threesomes and violent masturbation

Father Marko then asked her to leave medicine and go to Slovenia together with Superioress Ivanka Hosta and six other sisters. Thus, she became one of the first sisters of the Loyola community in Mengš, Slovenia, which she was a part of from October 1, 1987 to March 31, 1994.

Meanwhile, Father Marko’s abuse continued, Anna says. He should even become more aggressive. “I remember a very violent masturbation which I could not stop and during which I lost my virginity. It’s an episode that has sparked many requests for oral sex. The dynamic was always the same: if I doubted or refused, Rupnik discredited me in front of the community by saying that I was not growing spiritually. He had no inhibitions, he used all means to achieve his goal, including the confidential things he heard in confession. That’s when my mental breakdown began.”

Such things are said to be happening both in Slovenia and in Centro Aletta in Rome. “There, Father Marko asked me to have a threesome with another sister from the community, because according to him, sexuality must be freed from property, in the image of the Holy Trinity, where, as he said, ‘the third person received the relationship between two’. He asked me to live my femininity in an aggressive and dominant way, and when I couldn’t do it, he humiliated me deeply with phrases I can’t repeat. The last step of this descent into hell was the transition from the theological justifications of sex to an exclusively pornographic relationship. In 1992, he also took me twice to see porn movies in Rome on Via Tuscolana and near Termini station.”

The superiors did not care, the church investigation without conclusions

In the early nineties, according to Anna, out of 41 sisters from the community, Father Rupnik managed to abuse almost twenty. All in the same way and with the same strategy and threats if they wanted to say something.

Wanting it all to end, she once even ran away from the convent, hoping that her move would set off alarms, but that didn’t happen. She allegedly confronted Patra several times, shouted at him, but he only answered her with silence. She also spoke with Father Tomáš Špidlík and Ivanko Hosta, the chairwoman, but, as she claims, they both rejected her. According to her, neither Rupnik’s superiors nor Archbishop Alojz Šuštar did. All that happened was that Rupnik was removed from the Loyola community, he returned to Rome and continued his career there.

Anna then gathered her courage and left the community. “After my resignation, I suffered from depression for a long time, and even after that I was unable to establish an emotional relationship and build a family. The abuse I suffered deeply disturbed my psyche and left indelible marks on my mind and body, preventing me from making meaningful decisions.”

In December 2021, she testified against Rupnik before the Dicastery for Religious Instruction and told all the details. Since she did not receive information about the outcome of the church investigation for several months, she wrote an open letter last June in which she repeated her complaint against Father Rupnik, addressed to the Jesuit general Father Sosa. Cardinal Luis Ladaria, Prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Vicar of Rome, Angelo De Donatis, Father Johan Verschueren, Father Hans Zollner, Director of the Aletti Center, Maria Campatelli, and other members of the Jesuit Order and the Aletti Center were also included in the copy of the letter.

She has not received any response from any of them, and in the interview she also adds that she is still deciding whether she will also file a civil lawsuit against Rupnik.