Pope Leo XIV asked accusers of Father Marko Rupnik to have patience as a trial on the priest’s alleged abuse begins at the Vatican.

“A new trial has recently begun, judges were appointed. And processes for justice take a long time. I know it’s very difficult for the victims to ask that they be patient, but the Church needs to respect the rights of all people,” the pope said, addressing a question from Magdalena Wolinska-Reidi of EWTN News just outside his Castel Gandolfo residence, Villa Barberini, on Nov. 4.

“The principle of innocent until proven guilty is also true in the Church,” he added. “Hopefully, this trial that is just beginning will be able to give some clarity to all those involved.”

Leo answered questions from journalists as he left Castel Gandolfo to return to the Vatican. He has spent almost every Tuesday at the papal retreat, located 18 miles south of Rome, since early September.

The Vatican’s doctrine office announced last month that a panel of five judges had been nominated to decide the disciplinary case against Rupnik, accused of the sexual and psychological abuse of consecrated women under his spiritual care.

Rupnik — a well-known artist with mosaics and paintings in hundreds of Catholic shrines and churches around the world — is accused of having committed sexual, psychological, and spiritual abuse against dozens of women religious in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith began to investigate the abuse accusations against Rupnik in October 2023 after Pope Francis lifted the statute of limitations.

In May 2019, the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith launched a criminal administrative process against Rupnik after the Society of Jesus reported credible complaints of abuse by the priest to the Vatican.

One year later, the Vatican declared Rupnik to be in a state of “latae sententiae” excommunication for absolving an accomplice in a sin against the Sixth Commandment. His excommunication was lifted by Pope Francis after two weeks.

The Society of Jesus expelled Rupnik from the religious congregation in June 2023 for his “stubborn refusal to observe the vow of obedience.”

Art

Leo also told journalists Nov. 4 he is aware of calls to remove or cover up Rupnik’s artwork by some abuse survivors and their advocates.

“Certainly in many places, precisely because of the need to be sensitive to those who have presented cases of being victims, the artwork has been covered up. Artwork has been removed from websites. That issue is certainly something that we’re aware of,” he said.

According to the Rome-based Centro Aletti, the art and theology school founded in 1993 and previously directed by Rupnik, the workshop has 232 completed mosaic and other art projects around the world — including in some of the most prominent international Catholic shrines, such as the National Shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida in the state of São Paulo in Brazil and the Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in France.

The Vatican has at least three original mosaics by Rupnik, including in the Redemptoris Mater chapel in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City, in the chapel of the Dicastery for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments, and in the San Calisto Building in Rome’s Trastevere neighborhood.

Some calling for the art’s removal or concealment say that seeing the works in places of worship can have a traumatic effect on abuse victims, particularly since Rupnik’s accusers say he sexually abused them as they assisted him in the process of making his art.

The bishop of Lourdes, Jean-Marc Micas, announced earlier this year that the shrine would cover mosaics by Rupnik on the entrances to the shrine’s main church.

In June, the official Vatican News outlet removed images of the priest’s distinctive works, inspired by artistic traditions from Eastern Christianity, from its website, after years of criticism for its use of them to illustrate pages dedicated to saints and feast days.

Centro Aletti last year called the pressure to remove works of art by the studio part of “cancel culture” and the “criminalization of art.”

The Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors sent a letter to top Vatican officials last year urging them not to display artwork, like Rupnik’s, “that could imply either exoneration or a subtle defense” of those accused of abuse. 

In an interview with Crux in July, Pope Leo said how to respond to the Church’s abuse crisis is “one of the many challenges that I’m trying to find a way to deal with.”

And while it remains unresolved, it cannot be the Church’s sole focus, he said. 

He also drew attention to the difficulty of striking a balance between providing help and justice for victims with respect for the rights of the accused. “We’re in kind of a bind there.”

Leo put the issue of clerical sexual abuse into the context of his views on the wider role of the Church in the world: “We can’t make the whole Church focus exclusively on this issue, because that would not be an authentic response to what the world is looking for in terms of the need for the mission of the Church.”

This article was originally published by CNA.