Vatican: Rupnik trial still ongoing, reports of acquittal are baseless
Holy See Press Office Director Matteo Bruni called claims that Father Rupnik was acquitted “entirely unfounded” and said the five-judge panel continues to review documentation in the case.
The Holy See Press Office director said July 22 that the canonical trial of disgraced former Jesuit Father Marko Ivan Rupnik remains ongoing, rejecting media reports that Vatican judges found him not guilty. Father Rupnik has been accused of serially abusing several women, mostly religious.
“Reports concerning any decision whatsoever by the judges handling the case of the Reverend Marko Ivan Rupnik are entirely unfounded,” Holy See Press Office Director Matteo Bruni said in a statement to journalists cited by Vatican News.
The Italian blog Messa in Latino reported July 20 that Father Rupnik had been acquitted. AdVaticanum also claimed its sources corroborated the report and had said the decision concerned proceedings involving allegations of violence.
Father Rupnik was expelled from the Jesuit Order in 2023 after superiors determined that he was unwilling to obey restrictions imposed after he was credibly accused of psychological, spiritual, and sexual abuse against multiple women, Zeale News previously reported. Father Rupnik has not been laicized and his artworks remain on display at several Catholic shrines around the world.
The Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith announced in October 2025 that it had appointed a panel of five judges — women and clerics who hold no positions in the dicastery or elsewhere in the Roman Curia — to hear the case, as Zeale News previously reported. The Vatican said the selection was intended to ensure the panel’s independence.
Bruni said in the latest statement that no details about the panel’s work can be released while the case is underway, both “out of respect for the process itself” and “to avoid causing further hurt” to those involved.
“If the panel considers that it requires further information, it will take the necessary steps on its own initiative to obtain it,” he said, according to Vatican News.
The Holy See described the canonical criminal trial as “judicial in nature” and said it would determine under Canon Law whether Father Rupnik is guilty.
Bruni also said Canon Law can “judge and impose penalties concerning the internal life of the Church,” but that Father Rupnik is also “subject to the legislation of the countries in which any alleged crimes may have been committed.”
His statement added that “the statute of limitations for such offences is determined by the legislation of each country, independently of ecclesiastical authority.”
>> Documentary interviews former nuns Fr Marko Rupnik abused <<
