Rupnik and his companions occupy convent near Rome. Cardinal De Donatis is director
The convent of Montefiolo, in Sabina, where the Pope's former Vicar for Rome has built a luxurious apartment, will become the new headquarters of the former Jesuits of the Aletti Centre. With the relative expulsion of the nuns who live there. Our report.
March 3, 2025
By Riccardo Cascioli and Luisella Scrosati
With the collaboration of Patricia Gooding Williams
"The nuns have gone out, there's nobody here at the moment, I'm just passing through and can't let you in," answers a woman's voice over the intercom. "But can't we just visit the church and the grounds, we’ve heard it's beautiful?" we ask. "No, there's no one here. But we know there are priests... Silence, the conversation abruptly ends. It's Thursday 27 February, and we're standing outside the large metal gate of the convent of the Benedictine Sisters of Priscilla in Montefiolo, in the municipality of Casperia, a small village in the Sabina hills, in the province of Rieti.
We came here because we had been told that Father Marko Ivan Rupnik, the former Jesuit expelled from the Order and accused of the serious sexual abuse of women and nuns, has been residing here for several weeks. Not only that, but he is together with other former Jesuits from the Aletti Centre, once the headquarters of Rupnik and his followers until the abuse scandal broke.
Montefiolo is just a hilltop and the only building is the ancient, majestic convent, which originally belonged to the Capuchin Friars.
It was bought and restored in 1935 by Monsignor Giulio Belvederi. The then Secretary of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology opened the monastery to a group of women who wished to lead a religious life and who, in 1936, founded the Benedictine Oblates Regular of Priscilla, later to join the Benedictine Congregation. But now, shrouded in a mysterious conspiracy, it is passing into the hands of the small group of former Jesuits, favoured by its location. In fact, surrounded by a high wall and a wood, which separates it from the main road, it is an perfect residence for those who wish to live in secrecy.
Rejected by the woman's voice who says she is "just passing through", we decide to persist and linger at the entrance for a while. Surprisingly, only a few minutes later, the gate opens to allow a lone man in a car to drive out where "there is nobody": he stopped, we asked him for some information and obviously he doesn’t know anything either; but a little later, seeing the gate hasn’t closed, another man appears and walks towards us: this time he introduces himself: "I'm a priest, my name is Milan". Milan Žust, who for years had been Father Rupnik's superior in the Jesuit community of the Aletti Centre, and from 2018 to 2021 collaborator of the Delegate of the Superior General for the interprovincial houses and works in Rome, Father Johan Verschueren, who sent Rupnik on a tour of the houses and interprovincial works in Rome, despite the fact that he had already been hit by the famous "lightning excommunication" and despite the rumours of other abuses that really were already known. Hence confirming what an informer had told us.
Of course, we pretended to be tourists interested in the church and the convent, but Father Milan remained suspicious and evasive when asked more precise questions: he said that he had been there for two weeks and that we couldn't go in because the convent was being renovated, because the nuns were moving out and the future of the convent had not been decided.
It’s true, the few remaining nuns are packing their bags to move to their house in San Felice Circeo and, according to some sources, the convent will remain in the hands of this small group of former Jesuits who have by now invaded the nuns' area, eating with them in their refectory and laying down the law.
The question is: why here? And above all, why did Rupnik settle here, an hour's drive from Rome, after leaving the Jesuit order and joining the Slovenian diocese of Koper? Don Milan also tells us that he is a diocesan priest, but not from this diocese, instead of Sabina-Poggio Mirteto.
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