Paix Liturgique continues to place us all in its debt, even while its websites in various languages remain unaccountably defunct. The following letter 1080 of August 8, 2024, was sent in French to email subscribers, and now we bring it to you here in English. - PAK
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| Prayer card illustrated by Rupnik |
Praying Every Day in Front of Mosaics Created by Top-Ranking Abuser Rupnik Is Strange for a Nuncio Who Is Supposed to Fight Abuse
Few people know it, but there are only two places in France where there are works by Marko Rupnik, the Slovenian mosaic artist, ex-Jesuit, and close associate of Pope Francis, whom some twenty victims accuse of serious spiritual and sexual abuse, including nuns from the new community he founded and led in Slovenia.
These include the mosaics on the façade of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Lourdes - which, despite the expectations and demands of the victims, Archbishop Micas recently chose not to remove, but only to leave unilluminated at night... and the chapel of the Nunciature in Paris, the place where ecclesiastical careers are made and unmade. It is in fact the nuncio, on the basis of the survey of priests in the dioceses, the wishes of the outgoing bishop and the "Pope's line", or rather that of the cardinal who appointed the nuncio, that the terna are drawn up - the choice of three people between whom the Pope decides on a bishop, at each succession or transfer.
Executed in 2003-2004 during the time of nuncio Baldelli, in office from 1999 to 2009, the chapel is lavishly decorated with mosaics recognizable by their angular shapes and the black eyes - a total absence of light and elevation - of the figures, whose eyes, contrary to Christian tradition, represent not the light of the world, but the darkness of the world.
An unhealthy atmosphere pervades the chapel where the nuncio meditates - and where he celebrates Mass, too, before going off to make and unmake the ecclesiastical glories of this world, ignoring from his window the demonstrations of the faithful beneath his walls, and going on to chastise bishops for not waging war enough on infants, the married, and the dead by preventing sacraments in the Tridentine rite in their dioceses.
We recall the inglorious end of the previous nuncio, Luigi Ventura, whose wandering hands earned him - contrary to the usual customs and habits in diplomatic matters - an indictment for molestation, a lifting of his diplomatic immunity in July 2019, and then a trial for sexual assault with four victims in autumn 2020, where he was absent, but, having failed to appeal, had to pay the damages - in addition to receiving an infamous eight-month suspended sentence.
This did not prevent Archbishop Migliore from keeping the mosaics. Not surprisingly, it was in front of another work by this multi-recidivist abuser that - in the sad irony of Providence! - the bishops gathered by the CEF in Lourdes in autumn 2021, after the explosion of the CIASE [Commission indépendante sur les abus sexuels dans l'Eglise] report, made amends in front of the world's cameras for the sexual abuses committed by the Church over the decades and still covered up.
Moreover, Archbishop Migliore's relentless war on the faithful of the traditional Mass in France - the Mass of so many saints, of the builders of almost every church in the French countryside, of the saintly Curé d'Ars - hardly conceals his almost total lack of public outspokenness and commitment to the issue of abuse.
Indeed, it's hard to be credible on the issue of sexual abuse, when this nuncio celebrates Mass or meditates in a chapel adorned with the works of a multiple-victim abuser, whose erotic-mystical discourse was an integral part of the creative process, and who compared love in threes to the Holy Trinity and trips to pornographic cinemas in Rome to the elevation of the spirit.
On the other hand, in his Rupnik chapel, does the nuncio think he can stir up trouble in French dioceses by escaping his responsibilities - for example, by being promoted to Secretary of State if Cardinal Parolin becomes Pope? Will he be as fortunate as Rupnik, who - despite complaints lodged by his victims from 1994 to the present day, three canonical inquiries, and dozens of testimonies - has always been protected by the highest ecclesiastical authorities, is incardinated in a Slovenian diocese, has had his excommunication lifted by the Pope himself...?
The Rupnik affair is a marvellous illustration both of the "systemic" nature of abuse and of the protection afforded to abusers by the very institution criticized by CIASE, and of the inability of the Church's canonical justice system, transformed by the nuncio and his ilk into a purging machine, to render justice to victims and condemn abusers.
It's an example of the discrediting of ecclesiastical institutions as conceived by Pope Francis and his followers - not a Church that transmits what it has received in order to uplift the faithful and the nations, but an association of malefactors mitred to maintain its power and crush the "people of God" it never stops talking about.
These include the mosaics on the façade of the Basilica of Notre-Dame de Lourdes - which, despite the expectations and demands of the victims, Archbishop Micas recently chose not to remove, but only to leave unilluminated at night... and the chapel of the Nunciature in Paris, the place where ecclesiastical careers are made and unmade. It is in fact the nuncio, on the basis of the survey of priests in the dioceses, the wishes of the outgoing bishop and the "Pope's line", or rather that of the cardinal who appointed the nuncio, that the terna are drawn up - the choice of three people between whom the Pope decides on a bishop, at each succession or transfer.
Executed in 2003-2004 during the time of nuncio Baldelli, in office from 1999 to 2009, the chapel is lavishly decorated with mosaics recognizable by their angular shapes and the black eyes - a total absence of light and elevation - of the figures, whose eyes, contrary to Christian tradition, represent not the light of the world, but the darkness of the world.
An unhealthy atmosphere pervades the chapel where the nuncio meditates - and where he celebrates Mass, too, before going off to make and unmake the ecclesiastical glories of this world, ignoring from his window the demonstrations of the faithful beneath his walls, and going on to chastise bishops for not waging war enough on infants, the married, and the dead by preventing sacraments in the Tridentine rite in their dioceses.
We recall the inglorious end of the previous nuncio, Luigi Ventura, whose wandering hands earned him - contrary to the usual customs and habits in diplomatic matters - an indictment for molestation, a lifting of his diplomatic immunity in July 2019, and then a trial for sexual assault with four victims in autumn 2020, where he was absent, but, having failed to appeal, had to pay the damages - in addition to receiving an infamous eight-month suspended sentence.
This did not prevent Archbishop Migliore from keeping the mosaics. Not surprisingly, it was in front of another work by this multi-recidivist abuser that - in the sad irony of Providence! - the bishops gathered by the CEF in Lourdes in autumn 2021, after the explosion of the CIASE [Commission indépendante sur les abus sexuels dans l'Eglise] report, made amends in front of the world's cameras for the sexual abuses committed by the Church over the decades and still covered up.
Moreover, Archbishop Migliore's relentless war on the faithful of the traditional Mass in France - the Mass of so many saints, of the builders of almost every church in the French countryside, of the saintly Curé d'Ars - hardly conceals his almost total lack of public outspokenness and commitment to the issue of abuse.
Indeed, it's hard to be credible on the issue of sexual abuse, when this nuncio celebrates Mass or meditates in a chapel adorned with the works of a multiple-victim abuser, whose erotic-mystical discourse was an integral part of the creative process, and who compared love in threes to the Holy Trinity and trips to pornographic cinemas in Rome to the elevation of the spirit.
On the other hand, in his Rupnik chapel, does the nuncio think he can stir up trouble in French dioceses by escaping his responsibilities - for example, by being promoted to Secretary of State if Cardinal Parolin becomes Pope? Will he be as fortunate as Rupnik, who - despite complaints lodged by his victims from 1994 to the present day, three canonical inquiries, and dozens of testimonies - has always been protected by the highest ecclesiastical authorities, is incardinated in a Slovenian diocese, has had his excommunication lifted by the Pope himself...?
The Rupnik affair is a marvellous illustration both of the "systemic" nature of abuse and of the protection afforded to abusers by the very institution criticized by CIASE, and of the inability of the Church's canonical justice system, transformed by the nuncio and his ilk into a purging machine, to render justice to victims and condemn abusers.
It's an example of the discrediting of ecclesiastical institutions as conceived by Pope Francis and his followers - not a Church that transmits what it has received in order to uplift the faithful and the nations, but an association of malefactors mitred to maintain its power and crush the "people of God" it never stops talking about.
