ROME (AP) — The Vatican took the unusual step on Monday of announcing that it had named judges to decide the fate of a famous ex-Jesuit artist accused of sexually, spiritually and psychologically abusing women.

The case of the Rev. Marko Ivan Rupnik badly tarnished the legacy of Pope Francis, given suggestions that the Jesuit pope and the Jesuit-headed Vatican sex abuse office had protected one of their own.

The Vatican office that regulates clergy sex abuse cases, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said that the five judges named to hear the Rupnik case include women and priests who are external to the Vatican bureaucracy. In a statement, it said that such composition was “done in order to better guarantee, as in any judicial process, the autonomy and independence of the af

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