“He who remains silent must be considered consenting…” – Catholic World Report

“Who am I to judge Rupnik’s stories?

Pope Francis’ chief communicator, Dr. Paolo Ruffini, asked the rhetorical question Friday in the ballroom of an Atlanta, Georgia, hotel in front of reporters, including one – Colleen Dulle of America Magazine , it turns out – had asked him to explain the logic of his dicastery for continuing to use reproductions of artwork by a disgraced priest accused of serial sexual abuse.

Well, no one is asking Ruffini to judge this case which, just to be clear from the outset, is very strong.

The Rupnik case has been before the public for almost two years. The Jesuits who investigated him think he is guilty. The CDF estimates there is a case to answer but declined to prosecute, citing the statute of limitations. Rupnik would never have faced the prospect of a trial without sustained surveillance of the press and the pressure of in Francis’s inner circle.

Nobody is asking Natasa Govekar to judge the company either.

Govekar is the close associate of Rupnik and member of the Aletti Center art house that he founded in Rome under Pope Saint John Paul II (whose favor he enjoyed) in the early 1990s. She is also director of the theological and pastoral department of the Dicastery for the Communication of the Saint -Headquarters, responsible for the liturgical calendar on which several Rupniks appear.

Govekar was in Atlanta all week, as part of the official Vatican delegation, but she was not answering questions.

Another reporter, Paulina Guzik of OSV News, specifically asked Ruffini what message he believes the Dicastery’s continued use of Rupnik’s footage sends to victims.

“Do you think that if I put a photo of a work of art (away) from my – our – website, I will be closer to the victims? » Ruffini offered in response. “I think you’re wrong,” Ruffini told him.

Victims of sexual abuse by clerics have repeatedly called on the Vatican to stop using images, saying seeing the images worsens their trauma. Ruffini thinks he knows better than them too.

I almost wrote “The Dicastery of Ruffini”, but before that I almost wrote “The Dicastery of Rupnik…etc. » But in reality, the Dicastery for Communication of the Holy See belongs to the pope and no one else.

Francis is the pope.

Cui tacet…

A word from him could have stopped this traffic almost before it started. One word from him would put an end to it now.

With apologies to Robert Bolt’s fictionalized Thomas More (who cited a version) and to the real Pope Boniface VIII (in whose law books the maxim can be found): Cui tacet consentire videtur, ubi loqui debet ac potuit. “He who remains silent must be considered consenting, where he should have spoken and could have spoken. »

“We are not talking about abuse of minors,” Ruffini also said.

I can swear to make a sailor blush in several languages, but I need the power of eloquence to cast sufficient execration on such insensitivity.

In fact, we are talking about abuse of vulnerable people. At the very least, we are talking about people who investigators believe to have been in a state of physical, moral and spiritual disparity with their alleged attacker and, in one way or another, under his spiritual care.

If Rupnik’s victims are not “vulnerable adults” in the legally relevant sense of the term, then this category is meaningless. No one can ever be vulnerable in any legal sense of the term.

The changes to Church law that introduced the vulnerable adult category were, it seems, mere paper reforms intended not to give church investigators and prosecutors greater power to uncover crimes and punish them, nor to help pastors control their religious ranks and protect the faithful.

They were designed, it seems, for another purpose.

Set the tone

The miscarriage of justice in the Marko Rupnik case – the appalling farce that it has been from the start – is unfortunately not an aberration under Pope Francis. The Rupnik affair has indelibly tainted this pontificate. With every second that this intolerable state of affairs persists, the Rupnik affair moves closer to the definition of the Francis era.

Even if Pope Francis fires Ruffini for cause and orders the use of Rupnik’s depraved work to cease, he will have taken only cosmetic steps.

Pope Francis personally set the tone and established de facto This is the policy that Ruffini formally stated and defended for his communications dicastery last Friday. A year ago this month, Francis used one of Rupnik’s works as a prop in a video message for the people present at a Marian congress in Aparecida, Brazil.

The Rupnik affair had been a public scandal for seven months.

Not only is it unrealistic to expect any expression of remorse or regret from the current administration, it is also maudlin to assume that such or a similar expression will be accompanied by the necessary steps to begin to repair the damage already done to lives and souls.

His name is a word

When I was a student, I played a computer game called The era of empires. I was never a big gamer, but I imagine my parents wouldn’t have been too happy to know how much time I had for this. After all, they were paying for my education.

I don’t remember much about the game, but I do remember its cheeky failure messages in campaign scenarios.

“Your reign will mark the end of the history of your people, but you will be remembered,” one of them began. “Your name,” the message continues, “will become the word for ‘worthless’.” Come to think of it, most of the failure posts were not only cheeky, but also intelligent and even knowledgeable. Regardless, language development is endlessly fascinating. Like history in general, it is always complicated and always happening.

The Solemnity of the Sacred Heart was June 7^th this year, but last year it was June 16^th. Vatican media used the same Rupnik to illustrate the holiday this year as they did last year.

So, sometimes history repeats itself, or at least it rhymes.

Another work of art by Rupnik is due to be used later this month, to mark the feast of Saint Irenaeus of Lyon, illustrated with an image from a mosaic in Rupnik’s workshop in the chapel of the apostolic nunciature in Paris.

One wonders what will happen to Rupnik – the name – if it will become synonymous with diabolically depraved criminal abuse.

There is much more to the Rupnik case. There is culpable incompetence of prosecutors, irresponsible leadership, dereliction of duty, contempt for the government and those governed. These things are best associated with the one who presides over this horrible spectacle.