Priest later accused of child sex abuse was instructor at pope's seminary high school
The Rev. Nelson Daniel Rupp was one of 44 accused priests in the 2022 report. And Rupp is one of thousands of Catholic priests across the country accused of abusing kids.
But he appears to hold a distinction among them: He might be the only cleric publicly accused of molesting children, and who’s still living, to have worked at the seminary while the future Pope Leo XIV, then known as Robert Prevost, was a student there.
“I had him in class,” Rupp, now 84, told the Chicago Sun-Times, referring to Prevost’s time at St. Augustine high school seminary near Holland, Michigan, in or around 1973. “He was a teenager.”
“I only taught him for a few months. ... I think I was teaching Latin at that time. ... He struck me” as “just a delightful, wonderful young man,” Rupp said.
It’s widely known that as an adult, a bishop and a longtime leader in his religious order, the Augustinians, Prevost worked with, and had to deal with the ramifications of, alleged predator priests. Unknown probably to most is that while Prevost was a teen, he had proximity to a cleric who’s since been accused of sexually abusing and grooming children.
It’s unclear whether Rupp was engaged in sexual misconduct at the time and whether and when Prevost knew of any accusations. Neither the pope nor his press office responded to questions. Rupp denied molesting anyone and said he was wrongfully accused. The Augustinians refuse to confirm whether Rupp was one of Prevost’s instructors.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdo...used-abuse
The Rev. Nelson Daniel Rupp was one of 44 accused priests in the 2022 report. And Rupp is one of thousands of Catholic priests across the country accused of abusing kids.
But he appears to hold a distinction among them: He might be the only cleric publicly accused of molesting children, and who’s still living, to have worked at the seminary while the future Pope Leo XIV, then known as Robert Prevost, was a student there.
“I had him in class,” Rupp, now 84, told the Chicago Sun-Times, referring to Prevost’s time at St. Augustine high school seminary near Holland, Michigan, in or around 1973. “He was a teenager.”
“I only taught him for a few months. ... I think I was teaching Latin at that time. ... He struck me” as “just a delightful, wonderful young man,” Rupp said.
It’s widely known that as an adult, a bishop and a longtime leader in his religious order, the Augustinians, Prevost worked with, and had to deal with the ramifications of, alleged predator priests. Unknown probably to most is that while Prevost was a teen, he had proximity to a cleric who’s since been accused of sexually abusing and grooming children.
It’s unclear whether Rupp was engaged in sexual misconduct at the time and whether and when Prevost knew of any accusations. Neither the pope nor his press office responded to questions. Rupp denied molesting anyone and said he was wrongfully accused. The Augustinians refuse to confirm whether Rupp was one of Prevost’s instructors.
https://chicago.suntimes.com/the-watchdo...used-abuse
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
