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Sexual harassment and assault
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Porn for ‘spiritual growth’: nuns detail abuse by renowned priest Marko Rupnik

  • The mosaic artist is accused of sexually and psychologically abusing at least 20 women for nearly 30 years at a religious community in Slovenia
  • One victim said Rupnik made her take part in a threesome because it ‘was like the Trinity’

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Former religious sisters Gloria Branciani (left) and Mirjam Kovac, who have accused Marko Rupnik of sex abuse, appear publicly for the first time at a press conference in Rome on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters
Agence France-Presse

Two former nuns said on Wednesday that a world-renowned artist priest made them take part in threesomes and watch porn so they would “grow spiritually”.

Slovenian mosaic artist Marko Rupnik, 69, is accused of sexually and psychologically abusing at least 20 women for nearly 30 years at a religious community in Slovenia.

“He took me to pornographic theatres to help me ‘grow spiritually’,” Gloria Branciani, who was a member of the community until 1994, told journalists at a press conference in Rome.

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“He said that I would not grow spiritually if I did not meet his sexual needs,” she said, describing how he sexualised religious concepts.

Marko Rupnik (third from left) is pictured in a document held by Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the abuse tracking site Bishop Accountability, at a press conference in Rome, Italy, on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters
Marko Rupnik (third from left) is pictured in a document held by Anne Barrett Doyle, co-director of the abuse tracking site Bishop Accountability, at a press conference in Rome, Italy, on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

“We had another nun have sex with us because he said it was like the Trinity,” Branciani said, referring to the central Christian doctrine of three persons within one God.

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