Letter to the Friends of the Aletti Center (17/06/2023)

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