The mosaics on the doors of the facade of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, at the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Lourdes in southwestern France, are being covered in an undated photograph provided by the sanctuary. (OSV News photo/courtesy Lourdes Sanctuary)

Ahead of Pope Leo XIV’s visit to France later this month, the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary at Lourdes has begun covering up the prominent mosaics on its entryway that were created by Father Marko Rupnik, the former Jesuit currently on trial in a Vatican court following allegations of spiritual and sexual abuse by more than two dozen women. The decision, made by the local bishop and reportedly backed by the pope, evince that Leo is taking a different approach to Rupnik’s artwork than Francis, who kept a Rupnik mosaic in his personal apartment.

Like the mosaics at Lourdes, Rupnik’s trial has been hidden completely from view: In fact, we do not even know exactly what he has been charged with beyond “canonical violations.” The Vatican appointed a team of five judges to hear the case, but nothing has been disclosed about them beyond that they are a mix of women and clergymen, none of whom hold positions within the Roman Curia. (On “Inside the Vatican” this week, Gerry revealed that despite speaking to “many people now who I thought might know,” no information on the judges’ identities has come out.)

Still, a few details about the trial have leaked this summer. When two reports were published this summer (one by traditionalist blog Messa in Latino and another claiming to corroborate the details published by Ad Vaticanum, a relatively new publication launched this year) that claimed Rupnik had been acquitted, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni responded that the reports were false and that no verdict had been reached because the judges were still reviewing the evidence. Two weeks later, OSV reported that among the evidence were 22 previously undisclosed letters written by members of a women’s religious community at their superior’s request, detailing Rupnik’s abuse.

“It would seem from the little we know that maybe the judges have drawn in more information than there was in the previous elements of the trial, from the Jesuits and from the diocese in Ljubljana,” Gerry said on the podcast.

The secrecy of the trial has been criticized by the victims’ lawyer, Laura Sgrò, who has said that her victims have been completely left in the dark about where their complaints stand—a concern often cited by abuse survivors and their advocates.

 “The reality is, is there transparency on this trial? No,” Gerry said.

Meanwhile, the Vatican under Pope Leo has struck an entirely different tone as regards the use of Rupnik’s artwork. Until about a month after Pope Leo’s election, the Vatican’s Communications dicastery frequently used Rupnik’s artwork on its website, particularly for saints’ feast days—a decision Vatican spokesman Paolo Ruffini defended when I and OSV’s Paulina Gudziak asked him about it in summer 2024. The use of the artwork and the Vatican spokesman’s defense of it were widely criticized, including in an unprecedented open letter published by Cardinal Seàn O’Malley, O.F.M.Cap., on the eve of his 80th birthday.

In the same Paris Match interview in which the Lourdes bishop revealed that Pope Leo had backed his decision to cover the mosaics, the bishop also said Leo told him that he had personally ordered the dicastery to remove Rupnik’s artwork from its website shortly after his election as pope.

Still, there has been no unilateral move to cover Rupnik’s mosaics in the many sites where they are on display. Instead, the pieces have been handled on a case by case basis by the leadership of the churches and sites where they are on display. In the case of the Vatican’s Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, which is just outside the papal apartment and is almost entirely covered in Rupnik mosaics, the mosaics have reportedly not been touched; however, Pope Leo chose not to use the space as previous popes had for the Vatican’s Lenten retreat. In Brazil, on the other hand, “the largest installation of Rupnik’s art” is soon to be unveiled.

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Colleen Dulle is the Vatican Correspondent at America and co-hosts the "Inside the Vatican" podcast. She is the author of Struck Down, Not Destroyed: Keeping the Faith as a Vatican Reporter (Image, 2025).