Pope Leo XIV personally ordered his Dicastery for Communication to stop using works by the former Jesuit Rupnik, according to the bishop of Lourdes – ZENIT

(ZENIT News / Rome, 08.31.2026).- According to Bishop Jean-Marc Micas of Tarbes and Lourdes, the Pope personally instructed the Vatican’s communications office to stop using Rupnik’s mosaics to illustrate material published by Vatican News. Micas said Leo disclosed the decision during a private audience on June 26, telling him that he had personally ordered the removal of reproductions of Rupnik’s work that were still appearing on the Holy See’s official news website.

The significance of the revelation lies partly in its timing. For years, Rupnik’s mosaics remained prominent in Catholic communications and at major churches and shrines despite the allegations against him. Vatican News, for example, continued using his imagery to illustrate liturgical celebrations, including major Marian feasts.

The Vatican quietly removed the images in June, a decision that initially came without an official explanation. Micas’s account now provides an explanation for that change and portrays Leo as having taken a deliberate position on an issue that had become increasingly difficult for the Church to treat simply as a question of artistic preference.

Rupnik, a Slovenian former Jesuit priest and internationally known religious artist, is accused of sexual, spiritual, psychological and physical abuse involving numerous women and at least one man. The allegations became public in 2022 and primarily concern events dating from the 1980s and 1990s. At least 21 of the 40 women belonging to the Loyola Community, a female religious community he co-founded, have reportedly alleged abuse, while another 15 alleged victims subsequently came forward.

His artistic legacy is unusually extensive. His mosaics decorate more than 200 churches and sanctuaries across four continents, meaning that the question confronting Catholic institutions is not simply whether to remove an image from a website. In many places, Rupnik’s work has become physically embedded in churches and pilgrimage sites.

Lourdes is now one of the most visible examples.

Bishop Micas has ordered that Rupnik’s mosaics on the façade of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary be permanently covered. The works were created in 2008 for the 150th anniversary of the apparitions associated with Saint Bernadette. The decision was made after Micas met with abuse survivors, including women who alleged that Rupnik abused them while they were involved in producing his mosaics.

Those encounters changed the bishop’s understanding of what the artwork represented.

For some pilgrims, the mosaics may have been regarded primarily as devotional art. For survivors, however, they could function as an intensely personal reminder of abuse allegedly suffered in connection with their creation. That distinction is crucial when a sanctuary is supposed to offer refuge, prayer and healing.

Micas has therefore made clear that the coverings will remain after Leo’s visit to Lourdes, scheduled for September 25 to 28. The Vatican agreed with the decision, he said, and representatives of the Holy See inspected the site. A broader commission including artists and theologians is expected to consider the future of the basilica’s decoration.

The decision gives particular meaning to Leo’s forthcoming pilgrimage. Micas has stressed that the Pope did not choose Lourdes because of the Rupnik controversy. He will come, in the bishop’s description, as a pilgrim and pastor, doing what pastors traditionally do at Lourdes.

Yet the presence of the controversy inevitably gives the visit another dimension.

Lourdes has long been associated with the sick and wounded, and Micas has emphasized that the sanctuary has also become important to survivors of clerical sexual abuse. He has said that the message associated with the Immaculate Conception can offer them consolation and, perhaps, healing.

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That pastoral concern contrasts with an earlier Vatican debate over Rupnik’s art. In 2024, Paolo Ruffini, then prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Communication, defended the continued use of the artist’s work, arguing that Christians are called not to judge and that removing the mosaics would not necessarily help survivors recover. Cardinal Seán O’Malley, then head of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, took a more cautious position, urging Vatican departments to exercise pastoral prudence because the images could convey indifference toward victims’ suffering.

The issue is therefore larger than the fate of one artist’s reputation. It concerns how the Church should treat sacred art when the circumstances surrounding its creator have become inseparable from the experience of people who encounter it.

The answer is unlikely to be identical everywhere. Removing or covering an artwork can itself carry pastoral, artistic and financial consequences, particularly when a work is monumental and permanently incorporated into a church. But the Lourdes decision establishes a clear priority: the Church does not have to preserve the visibility of an artist’s work at the expense of people who experience that work as a source of pain.

At the same time, the Church has not declared Rupnik guilty of the allegations currently before the canonical authorities. His canonical proceedings remain underway at the Vatican. In July 2026, reports circulated claiming that a five-judge panel had cleared him of the allegations. The Holy See’s press office subsequently rejected those reports as entirely unfounded, stating that the assessment was still in progress and that the judges were examining documentation from dioceses, the Jesuits, individuals involved and the press.

Because canonical proceedings before the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith are ordinarily confidential, the lack of public information has itself become a source of criticism. Laura Sgrò, who represents several alleged victims, has questioned the secrecy of the proceedings and complained that the women she represents have not had the opportunity to be heard during the trial.

That unresolved legal process is important when considering Leo’s decisions. Removing Rupnik’s imagery from Vatican communications or covering mosaics at Lourdes is not equivalent to declaring a judicial verdict. It is instead a pastoral and institutional judgment about whether the continued public use of the images is appropriate while serious allegations remain under examination.

The Vatican’s present handling of the artwork suggests that the Church can acknowledge the pastoral consequences of allegations without pretending that an artistic decision settles the underlying legal case.

The contrast with previous years is nevertheless unmistakable. Rupnik was expelled from the Society of Jesus in July 2023, while questions surrounding earlier disciplinary decisions, including the lifting of an automatic excommunication in 2020, have continued to fuel controversy. The fact that his art nevertheless remained visible in prominent Catholic contexts became, for many survivors and advocates, a symbol of the Church’s failure to appreciate how profoundly abuse can alter the meaning of familiar religious spaces.

Leo XIV now appears to be moving away from that ambiguity.

The Pope’s reported instruction to Vatican communications, combined with Lourdes’ decision to cover Rupnik’s mosaics indefinitely, does not resolve the controversy. Nor does it prejudge the canonical process. But it sends a significant institutional message: sacred art cannot be considered entirely apart from the human circumstances surrounding its creation when those circumstances involve grave allegations of abuse.

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