Vatican turned blind eye to our abuse, nuns tell Pope Francis

A former nun has called on the Pope to launch an investigation into an priest she claims forced her to watch porn and take part in a threesome.

Gloria Branciani, speaking in Rome, is one of 20 nuns who have accused priest and artist Marko Rupnik of sexually abusing them. Picture: AFP

A former nun has called on Pope Francis to launch a public investigation into an influential priest she claims pushed her close to suicide by forcing her to watch pornographic films and take part in a threesome.

Gloria Branciani, 59, from Italy, is one of 20 nuns who have accused priest and artist Marko Rupnik of sexually abusing them and getting away with it thanks to powerful friends he made at the Vatican during a career in which he created mosaics for major cathedrals and the Vatican itself.

Speaking publicly for the first time in Rome, Ms Branciani she said she wanted to send a clear message to Pope Francis. “I want the truth to be known,” she said, calling on the Pope to investigate how Rupnik covered his tracks for decades and publish the findings.

“There are many of us, but we have been asked in all possible ways to stay silent, to disappear. We have been discredited and that is unacceptable.”

Ms Branciani described how the priest, from Slovenia, groomed her in the late 1980s when she was in her early twenties, exploiting her low self-esteem.

“He said I would not grow spiritually if I did not accept his sexual requests,” she said, claiming he would have sex with her in pauses between painting the face of Christ at his Rome studio, and take her to porn cinemas.

After they moved to a religious community he co-founded in Slovenia, Ms Branciani said Rupnik organised a threesome, arguing: “Our relationship had to be in the image of the Trinity, so we needed to ask another nun to be the Holy Spirit.”

When she complained about his increasingly aggressive demands for sex, Rupnik warned Ms Branciani not to go to church authorities. “He said it would be my word against him, he would have denied all and I would be considered mad.”

After considering suicide, Ms Branciani complained to senior officials and left the church, only to be ignored before she gave an anonymous account to an Italian journalist in 2022.

It then emerged the church had known about Rupnik’s behaviour, excommunicating him in 2020 for using the confessional to absolve a woman with whom he had relations, only to rescind the sanction two weeks later.

In 2002 the Vatican’s doctrinal office considered allegations by nine victims, but eventually decided a statute of limitations had kicked in, even though it can be waived in sex abuse cases.

Rupnik’s Jesuit order expelled him last year after hearing evidence from other nuns, which they called “very highly credible”.

Anne Barrett Doyle, the co-director of Bishop Accountability which fights sex abuse in the church, said she wanted to know if Pope Francis had a hand in reversing the excommunication and the doctrinal office’s decision.

Francis has denied meddling in the case, and said in October that the Vatican should ignore the statute of limitations and reactivate its investigation. But he has also met with a key defender of Rupnik and declined to meet the nuns. In the meantime, Rupnik has been appointed parish priest in his home diocese in Slovenia.

Ms Barrett Doyle said the mishandling of the allegations had occurred after Francis vowed to stamp out sex abuse in the church at a key 2019 summit with bishops.

“It’s in the last five years that the most egregious acts of cover-up of Rupnik’s crimes have occurred,” she said.

Laura Sgro, a lawyer representing Branciani, said: “Is there anything more blasphemous than invoking the Holy Trinity for a threesome?”

The Times