Posted on 01/07/2007 8:41:39 PM PST by siunevada
In a turn of events stunning for its rapidity, Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, appointed by Pope Benedict XVI as the new Archbishop of Warsaw just one month ago, announced his resignation today in the wake of on-going revelations about his collaboration with Communist-era security forces.
His resignation, however, may eventually be remembered as only the beginning of the story. Polish sources told NCR today that further revelations about the penetration of security forces into the Polish church during the Communist era are expected, including the possible release of a dossier on another sitting Polish bishop as early as next week.
American Catholic writer George Weigel, who teaches regularly in Poland and has extensive contacts in the Polish church, said the Wielgus episode illustrates the need for the church to deal with this chapter of its past.
"It has the responsibility to make a full public record using these materials in a responsible way," Weigel said in an interview with NCR this morning. "Otherwise, it will be open to media exaggerations and distortions, and perhaps international blackmail."
By that, Weigel said he meant the manipulation of similar revelations by forces which have an interest in undermining the moral authority of the Polish Catholic church.
Under the codenames “Adam” and “Gray,” Wielgus apparently was recruited as a young professor of medieval philosophy in 1973, documents produced from Polish archives this week show, and had contacts with the security forces over the next three decades. Wielgus signed a form promising to collaborate. According to media reports, he received special training, was allowed to travel abroad in exchange for intelligence reports, and provided analyses of his colleagues as well as members of the Polish hierarchy.
Weigel said this material is drawn from more than 100 miles of documents from the security forces which have long been available to scholars and researchers, and that "responsible" scholars from Poland's Institute of National Memory, charged with studying the material, "some of whom are very serious Catholics," had warned that the Wielgus appointment would be a problem.
"This was all avoidable," Weigel said.
On Dec. 12, as the controversy first erupted, the Vatican issued a statement saying that Wielgus' past had been taken into consideration, and that Benedict XVI had “full confidence” in his nominee. Over the last week, however, that confidence crumbled.
Recent revelations about Wielgus “have gravely compromised his authority, including among the faithful,” said Jesuit Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesperson, today. The resignation is “the right solution to deal with the disorientation created in that nation,” Lombardi told Vatican Radio.
Wielgus made his announcement during Mass of thanksgiving for Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who was to end his term as Archbishop of Warsaw today. Instead, Glemp has now been asked to stay on as Apostolic Administrator of the archdiocese until Benedict XVI names another successor.
Cries of “Stay With Us!” broke out in the Warsaw cathedral as Wielgus spoke, and Glemp went on to speak critically about the pressures that led to the resignation.
Benedict will want to proceed cautiously to make sure his next pick doesn’t have a similar set of skeletons in his closet, and that may be a complicated process, according to Tomasz Pompowski, an editor with DZIENNIK, an influential Polish newspaper, who has followed the Wielgus case closely.
Pompowski told NCR that he’s aware of 20 cases involving alleged collaboration by current bishops, who were recruited earlier in their clerical careers and groomed as they moved up the system. Pompowski said the degree of collaboration varies from case to case, but some involve allegations at least as serious as those surrounding Wielgus.
The Polish church has long been aware that it’s sitting on a “time bomb” with regard to Communist-era collaborators, Pompowski said, but it avoided confronting these issues during the last years of Pope John Paul II’s papacy for fear of burdening the beloved Polish pope in his twilight.
Wielgus has insisted that he never caused anyone harm, and that he went along with the security forces largely so that he could pursue his academic career, believing that his capacity to travel internationally was important for the church during an age of enforced isolation from the outside world.
Neverthless, Wielgus has acknowledged that “the fact of my involvement has harmed the Church.”
Polish sources say the policy under both the late Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski of Warsaw and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Cracow, later Pope John Paul II, was that any contact with the security forces should be avoided if at all possible, and immediately reported in writing to ecclesiastical superiors. Wojtyla, for example, insisted on having witnesses present for such meetings, even for the most delicate discussions.
In that sense, observers say, Wielgus went well beyond what was considered normal practice for clergy of the day.
It was not immediately clear what Wielgus’ future may hold, but Polish sources expect something similar to what happened in the case of Archbishop Julian Paetz, who resigned as the Archbishop of Poznan in March 2002 amid a sexual abuse scandal. Paetz today lives in an archdiocesan-owned apartment in Poznan and keeps a generally low profile.
Sad. But it is a reminder that we are ALL human, and subject to temptation. We all sin.
Sometimes media pressure does what is truly good for the Church, their intentions aside.
Also, I'm all for the Pope having spies. I don't think His Holiness does have spies, but why not send some agents, incognito, to parishes to inform on humble priests who suffer for the faith, their folks, and aren't interested in becoming bishops? Those priests are the ones you want to assume the throne and cross of leadership.
This whole passive system of choosing from among those who rise to the top is broken. The passive system of choosing Church leaders rewards spying for selfish gain.
more information:
CNN.com, 4 January 2007
http://edition.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/01/04/poland.bishop.ap/index.html
(excerpt)
WARSAW, Poland (AP) -- Poland's Roman Catholic Church is examining archives following allegations that Warsaw's new archbishop collaborated with the communist-era secret police for over 20 years, a spokesman said Thursday.
Since Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus was appointed by the Vatican to head Warsaw's church, three Polish news organizations have published reports alleging he informed on other priests in the 1970s and 1980s in exchange for favors.
Wielgus, who has denied collaborating with the secret police, is to be installed as archbishop on Sunday.
Church spokesman Jozef Kloch said a three-man church commission had poured through files in recent days and had presented Wielgus on Thursday with a summary of what it found in 68 pages of secret police files on him, Kloch told reporters in Warsaw.
"We've given the report to Archbishop Wielgus so he can have the possibility to take a stance on it," Kloch said.
###
International Herald Tribune, 7 January 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/07/news/poland.php
(excerpt)
The archbishop had tried to minimize reports of his collaboration, which surfaced two weeks after the pope had named him to the job on Dec. 6, insisting that his contacts with the country's feared security service — the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or SB — were benign and routine.
But Wielgus admitted to deeper involvement on Friday after documents from secret police files were published in newspapers that suggested he had informed on fellow clerics for decades, beginning in the late 1960s.
Wielgus has maintained that his collaboration with the SB did not involve spying on anyone and did not hurt anyone. Nonetheless, any cooperation between the Polish clergy and the service is troubling to Poles, as it is to people all over the former Soviet bloc, because the church under John Paul II, the Polish- born pope, was a beacon of hope and encouragement to people fighting for freedom from Communist oppression.
That the leadership of the Warsaw archdiocese could fall to a Communist collaborator would have been an unbearably cruel twist for many people here who remember the brutal murder of one of the diocese's most charismatic priests of the era, Reverend Jerzy Popieluszko. One of the first priests from the influential archdiocese to support striking Solidarity members at the Gdansk shipyards, Popieluszko was beaten to death by SB agents in 1984. They dumped his body in a reservoir.
Wielgus assumed his duties as archbishop on Friday as media coverage of his past association with the SB reached a peak. The Polish church's historical commission, which the country's bishops — including Wielgus — had asked to review evidence against him, issued a statement during the day that "numerous, substantial documents" confirmed the prelate's "willingness" to cooperate with the secret police.
That judgment forced Wielgus to issue a more contrite statement late in the day and set in motion negotiations with the Vatican that ended with his resignation Sunday.
###
International Herald Tribune, 9 January 2007
http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/01/09/news/church.php?page=1
(excerpts)
KRAKOW, Poland: Poland was convulsed in finger pointing and self-recrimination Tuesday as more allegations of former secret-police collaborators among the Catholic clergy spilled onto the country's front pages, sullying an institution that for decades was considered spotless in its fight against Communism.
The stream of revelations will soon turn into a torrent: Here in Krakow, Father Tadeus Isakowicz-Zaleski is preparing to publish a book that will identify 39 priests whose names he found in Krakow's secret police files, three of whom are now bishops in the Polish church.
/snip/
But it was not even two weeks after the pope's death that the first report of collaboration became public when the Institute of National Remembrance published documents that showed Father Konrad Hejmo, a Dominican priest who was eventually posted to the Vatican, passed information to the secret service's anti-Church branch. Hejmo admitted giving the information but denied he was a spy.
During the 25th anniversary celebrations for the Solidarity trade union in Gdansk that August, a friend told Zaleski that his name was mentioned in the secret police files in Krakow. When he returned to the city, Zaleski visited the archives and was stunned to find a file crammed with 500 pages of documents concerning him.
"I was shocked by that," ther Zaleski said in his cluttered, garret office. He was even more troubled when he read that two priests had provided the secret police information on his activities. Though the priests were only identified by code names, they were described so precisely, he knew who they were.
"I just couldn't imagine that there were priests who had cooperated with the secret police," he said.
He sought guidance from the Krakow archbishop, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, but at was first ignored then told to pray. Eventually, his superiors advised that he burn the documents.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.