Two former nuns have said a world-renowned artist priest forced them to take part in threesomes and watch porn to "grow spiritually".
The 69-year-old Slovenian mosaic artist Marko Rupnik has been accused of sexually and psychologically abusing at least 20 women over nearly 30 years in a religious community in Slovenia, AFP reported.
"He took me to pornographic theaters to help me 'grow spiritually,'" Gloria Branciani, who was a member of the community until 1994, told reporters at a press conference in Rome.
"He said I wouldn't grow spiritually if I didn't satisfy his sexual needs," she says, describing how he sexualized religious concepts.
"We had another nun have sex with us because he said it was like the Holy Trinity," Branciani said, referring to the central Christian doctrine.
In 2020, Rupnik was briefly excommunicated for absolving someone who had sexual relations with him but was reinstated after he formally repented.
He was finally expelled from the Jesuit order - of which Pope Francis is a member - in June last year.
In October, Francis lifted the statute of limitations on the crimes, opening the way for potential disciplinary proceedings.
"We were young, but our ideals were exploited by abuse of conscience, power, spirit, body, and often sex," says former nun Miriam Kovacs, who left the community in 1996.
Ann Barrett Doyle, co-director of the abuse-tracking site Bishop Accountability, which documents abuses in the Catholic Church, described Rupnik as "an influential cleric who was protected at the highest levels of the Church and the Vatican."
The press conference comes five years after an unprecedented Vatican summit on sexual abuse in the Church, at the end of which Francis pledged a "zero tolerance" approach.
"The Rupnik case shows that little has changed," said Barrett Doyle, who called for an independent investigation and publication of its findings.
Holy See spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters that the Vatican was gathering "all available information on the case" to "determine which procedures would be possible and useful to apply."
Branciani is due to testify soon before the Dicastery on the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with allegations of sexual abuse against clergy. /BGNES
