Rupnik Case: Maria Campatelli and that inability to feel shame

Maria Campatelli defends Rupnik but does not explain why the Jesuit disobeys the Church.

🇮🇹 Rupnik Case: Maria Campatelli e quell'incapacità di provare vergogna

Very often Pope Francis has spoken of ‘vergüenza’ during his interventions on the subject of abuse. This is shame, a sentiment that does not even remotely transpire in the mind and heart (let alone on the face) of Maria Campatelli, the pioneer of the Aletti Centre and a faithful follower of Marko Ivan Rupnik.

In a statement published on 17 June 2023, the first to address the allegations (again without entering into the merits and without telling the truth), the woman writes: “a media campaign based on defamatory and unproven accusations, as opposed to providing the press with correct information based on deeds and documents, in their possession, demonstrating a different truth from what was published”.

Ms Campatelli may not have studied enough at the Gregorian University and we advise her to go back to her school benches, but the proceedings of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith that led to the conviction of Father Marko Ivan Rupnik for absolving the accomplice in the Sixth Commandment, was a canonical proceeding that respected all the procedures and all the rights of the accused. Rather, Campatelli, should explain why, if the accusations are false, Marko Rupnik has not filed a complaint against these women? It is a sense of justice: if you are the victim of slander, you sue! Choosing to remain silent, as the Slovenian Jesuit did, is certainly a right of the accused, but it brings with it consequences.

The director of the Aletti Centre does not explain why Rupnik disobeyed the restrictions imposed. It is not only about the new ones, imposed following the Silere non possum complaint of 01 December 2022. It is also about those restrictions imposed in previous years that had not caused any problems for the Slovenian Jesuit. How come he did not ask to leave the Order when the first restrictions were imposed on him? Perhaps he did not do it because no one controlled him anyway and he continued to do what he wanted? Is this obedience to the Church and communion?

Campatelli is keen to say that Marko Ivan Rupnik had asked to leave the Company. It should be pointed out that under canon 691 – §2 of the Code of Canon Law this faculty is reserved to the Apostolic See. In this case, the Pope himself would deal with it.

Moreover, according to Canon 693, the Apostolic See cannot grant such an indult if there is no bishop willing to incardinate the religious. Marko Ivan Rupnik, what name of ordinary has he submitted in his application, who would now be willing to accept him?

Furthermore, this statement by Campatelli confirms two things: firstly, that the news that Silere non possum gave about a possible transfer of Rupnik to Milan was correct. In this case, Father Verschueren also lied. We have said it many times, the Jesuits are not telling the truth, they are simply trying to wash their hands of it because it is a case that has now broken out. Secondly, that Rupnik enjoys the protection of the Pope and therefore the Society of Jesus does not care.

At a time in history when any diocese faced with a case of abuse is obliged by Rome to “show closeness to the victims” even before understanding whether the accusation is true, the Aletti Centre’s communiqué is a real shame.

We, unlike Maria Campatelli, have the documents of Rupnik’s proceedings in the Congregation (now the Dicastery); she, once again, speaks without proving what she says. The backs of Marko Rupnik and Maria Campatelli are well protected by Bergoglio. Even more shameful is the sentence with which this woman ends her communiqué: “It is presumable, therefore, that Father Rupnik will remain firm in his already manifested desire to leave the Order, continuing to live this moment in discernment and ecclesial communion”.

Ecclesial communion? Does a priest who does not present himself before his order and does not obey the orders given, speak of ecclesial communion? If the request to “leave the Order”, Rupnik had indeed presented it on 21 January 2023, he should know that he is bound to obey his legitimate superior until he is granted dispensation from his vows. Moreover, in this case it is not possible not to mention a person whom Rupnik deeply hates, as Benedict XVI said ‘dispensations’ cannot be granted when in reality this release is for accusations. It is clear that the Jesuit artist remained in the order as long as it suited him, and in January 2023 he asked to leave in order not to undergo the canonical process.

In Santa Marta, in fact, they assured him that no canonical proceedings would be opened for him here in the Vatican, and in this way he would avoid the Order’s investigatio and subsequent proceedings.

Father Dysmas De Lassus explains it very well in his book ‘Risks and Drifts of Religious Life’: the abusive founder will never leave his community. The community will either live with him or die with him.

Today, it is clear that Rupnik used the (only facade) director of the Aletti Centre to write what he actually dictated, but uses these people as slaves to serve him. He clearly does not stoop to speak or write to those who accuse him. He is the God, the untouchable; the others are those who lead him to martyrdom, those who crucify him.

Following this statement, it is clear that the Maciel case is a trifle compared to this one. Pope Francis, with this case, has stamped an indelible stain on his pontificate. The only way he can clean his face (certainly not to be credible) is to dismiss Rupnik from the clerical state and dissolve the Aletti Centre.

S.I.

Silere non possum

THE ALETTI CENTRE'S COMMUNIQUÉ

On June 15, 2023, the news became public via internet that Fr. Marko Rupnik had been expelled from the Society of Jesus.

The decree of expulsion was motivated by Fr. Rupnik’s refusal to observe the vow of obedience with regard to a new mission that the Society had entrusted to him in a note dated March 9, 2023, involving his transfer to a Jesuit community in Lombardy.

For the sake of accurate and complete information, however, the events leading to this expulsion deserve to be reconstructed in such a way that at least takes other elements into account.

The June 15 communication of the D.I.R (Jesuit Interprovincial Houses and Works) inexplicably fails to note that already on January 21, 2023, Fr. Marko Rupnik himself, observing all the required canonical conditions, submitted a request to leave the Society, since trust in his superiors had collapsed in toto after the latter had, unfortunately, repeatedly shown themselves to favor a media campaign based on defamatory and unproven accusations (which exposed the person of Fr. Rupnik and the Aletti Center to forms of lynching), rather than supplying the press with correct information, based on written acts and documents in their possession, which would demonstrate a truth different from that which was being published.

Likewise, the communication of the D.I.R. omits to note that, for the same reasons, i.e., an overriding distrust of their superiors arising from the aforementioned situation, the other Jesuits of the Aletti Center also requested an indult to leave the Society. Each is awaiting the conclusion of his own case, in order to be able to continue in the exercise of priestly ministry.

In this context, with Fr. Rupnik’s previous, binding request to leave the Society in focus, one can intuit that the new missio with the transfer, which he received on March 9, was illogical, unless one wished to see in it the purely instrumental end of furnishing the presupposition for an act of disobedience, on which the decree of expulsion could then be based (which in fact happened).

It is to be presumed, then, that Fr. Rupnik will remain firm in his desire, already manifest, to leave the Society, while continuing to live this moment in discernment and in ecclesial communion.

In light of what has happened and is still happening, we give thanks to the Lord for the faith that history is in His hands, and that all things work together unto good for those who love Him. We ask Him to keep us, that we might be numbered among those persons.

Maria Campatelli and the team of the Aletti Center