Leo XIV pulls Rupnik's mosaics from the Holy See's publications

The bishop of Tarbes-and-Lourdes has revealed that Leo XIV told him, during a private audience in June 2025, that he had instructed the Holy See's communication office to stop using the mosaics of the former Jesuit Marko Rupnik to illustrate its publications. The images had already been quietly removed from the Vatican's news site that same month, less than a month after the pope's election, without any official statement. The bishop says Leo XIV « is really very determined on this question ».

The Church has always taught that a sacred image is honoured only for what it represents, and not for the hand that fashioned it. But she teaches with equal firmness the gravity of scandal. « But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea », says the Lord.

The Catechism of the Council of Trent ranks scandal among the sins forbidden by the fifth commandment, because it deals death to the soul of one's neighbour. When a work, through the infamy of its author, becomes for the faithful — and first of all for the victims — an occasion of falling, to withdraw it from their sight is no contempt for sacred art: it is prudence and charity toward the wounded.

The bishop has ordered that the mosaics adorning the façade of the Basilica of Our Lady of the Rosary, in Lourdes, laid in 2008 for the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the apparitions, be covered for an indefinite period; he says representatives of the Holy See inspected the site and gave their agreement. According to him, the panels will remain covered after the pope's visit to Lourdes, scheduled for 25 to 28 September.

No pontifical celebration is planned in the chapel of the nunciature in Paris, also decorated by Rupnik and said to have been closed since the opening of the canonical trial. Rupnik, a Slovenian priest expelled from the Society of Jesus in July 2023, is accused of sexual, spiritual, psychological and physical abuse; the trial continues in Rome. In July 2026, reports of an acquittal by a panel of five judges circulated; the Holy See press office denied them as baseless, stating that the examination remained under way. This artist's mosaics adorn more than two hundred churches and sanctuaries across four continents.

Sources. Catechism of the Council of Trent (1566), on the fifth commandment, on scandal; St Matthew, XVIII, 6 (Vulgate).