VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Community of Loyola, a religious community of women founded in Slovenia with the assistance of Father Marko Rupnik, who has been accused of abuse, including of women in the community, has been ordered to dissolve by the Vatican.
“I can confirm that by a decree signed in recent weeks, following an apostolic visitation and after consultation with those responsible for the visitation, with the ordinaries and others familiar with its life and work, the Community of Loyola has indeed been suppressed,” said Matteo Bruni, director of the Vatican press office, in a statement Dec. 15.
The Archdiocese of Ljubljana, Slovenia, posted a notice on its website saying that the sisters were informed Dec. 14 that the Vatican Dicastery for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life had ordered the community’s suppression and said they had a year to disband.
The founding members of the community, which now has about 45 members from five countries, made their first vows with the then-Archbishop Aloysius Šuštar of Ljubljana in 1991 and their constitutions were approved in 1994.
Archbishop Stanislav Zore, the current archbishop of Ljubljana, ordered a visitation of the community in 2019, the 25th anniversary of the approval, the archdiocesan note said. The results were sent to the Vatican, which then asked the Diocese of Rome, where the sisters’ generalate is located, to investigate further.
“On 20 October 2023, the dicastery issued a decree dissolving the Loyola Community because of serious problems concerning the exercise of authority and the way of life together,” the archdiocese said. “The Dicastery stipulated that the decree must be carried out within one year.”
Sister Ivanka Hosta, who founded the community with the assistance of Father Rupnik, was removed as superior by the Vatican in September and sanctioned for an abusive style of governance, the Portuguese website 7MARGENS reported. The decree imposing the penalties on Sister Hosta was signed by Auxiliary Bishop Daniele Libanori of Rome, who was appointed to investigate the community.
Father Rupnik, an artist whose mosaics decorate churches and chapels at the Vatican and around the world, moved to Rome from Slovenia in the 1990s. He has been accused of sexually, spiritually or psychologically abusing more than 20 women and at least one man over a 40-year period.
The Society of Jesus, the order to which Father Rupnik belonged until his expulsion in June, in 2018 received allegations of sexual misconduct and an allegation of absolving in confession a woman with whom he had had sex. It reported the findings of its preliminary investigation to the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and placed restrictions on Father Rupnik.
While he had been briefly excommunicated in 2020 for the canonical crime of absolution of an accomplice, the excommunication was lifted after he apparently repented. The Jesuits conducted another investigation into other accusations of abuse and sent those findings to the now-Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith in January 2022 with the recommendation of a criminal process.
In October 2020, the dicastery said it could not proceed with the allegations because the statute of limitations for reporting had passed. Pope Francis had told the Associated Press that he does not generally waive the statute of limitations on cases involving the abuse of adults.
After the Jesuits expelled Father Rupnik for refusing to uphold his vow of obedience to the increasing number of restrictions placed on his ministry and confront the allegations against him, he was accepted as a priest into the Diocese of Koper, Slovenia.
A statement to AP from the diocese said it accepted Father Rupnik’s transfer in August because he had not “been found guilty of the alleged abuses before either an ecclesiastical tribunal or civil court.”
In late October the Vatican announced that Pope Francis lifted the statute of limitations on abuse accusations against Father Rupnik to allow for a formal investigation of the case by the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.
Also in late October, the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors reached out to known victims of Father Rupnik, asking to meet with them to discuss “the processes and actions that were carried out in your particular case, to identify how all this may have affected the legitimacy of your complaint, your rights and the support and accompaniment that were not given to you.”
