Archbishop Wielgus resignation in Warsaw
Tearful archbishop resigns at first mass as he admits spying for the secret police
Matthew Day in Warsaw and Malcolm Moore in Rome
Daily Telegraph 8 January 2007
The Archbishop of Warsaw resigned yesterday minutes before he was due to celebrate his inaugural mass, after admitting that he had been an informant for Poland's communist-era secret police.
Mgr Stanislaw Wielgus, who was appointed archbishop of the Polish capital last Friday, tearfully read out his resignation to cries of disbelief from the congregation in Warsaw Cathedral.
"Stay with us," shouted several worshippers, despite repeated calls for quiet. Outside, many of the conservative supporters of Mgr Wielgus jostled and exchanged insults with a handful of demonstrators opposing the archbishop's appointment.
After initially denying that he had any links with the Cold War secret services, Mgr Wielgus admitted last Friday that he had been a collaborator after two independent commissions condemned him.
His accusers say he was first approached when studying at Lublin University in 1967, and was referred to by his spy masters as either Agent Grey or Adam Wisocki.
He was allegedly asked to keep tabs on the "antisocial activities" of other priests and was once asked to infiltrate the Polish office of Radio Free Europe, an assignment he declined.
His dramatic resignation came after overnight talks between the Vatican and the Polish government. Previously, the Vatican had supported Mgr Wielgus, declaring before Christmas that Pope Benedict had been "fully aware" of all the details of the priest's past before making his choice.
However, the prospect of a split within the Polish Catholic Church finally convinced the Vatican to abandon its nominee on Saturday night.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope's spokesman, said yesterday: "The behaviour of Mgr Wielgus in the former years of the communist regime in Poland has severely compromised his authority.
"The relinquishment of his position in Warsaw and the Pope's ready acceptance of his resignation appeared to be an adequate solution, despite his humble and moving request for a pardon."
Just before the beginning of the service, the Vatican's embassy in Poland issued a statement saying that the Pope had asked Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the former Archbishop of Warsaw and a key figure in the country's struggle against communist rule, to resume his role temporarily until "further decisions have been made".
Inside the cathedral, there were chaotic scenes as Cardinal Glemp defended his colleague and suggested that he had not lost the support of the higher levels of the Polish Church.
Addressing hundreds of worshippers, he said the judgment against Mgr Wielgus was based on "scraps of papers and documents" and added that "this is not the kind of judgment we need".
His remarks, in front of Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, and Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwicsw, the former private secretary of Pope John Paul II, were frequently interrupted by applause.
The scandal will increase pressure on the Polish Church to confront the issue of how many clergy worked for the communist secret police. One Vatican source suggested yesterday that "as many as 15 per cent" of priests in the former communist bloc had collaborated with the regime.
However, the Vatican pinned the blame firmly on former communists who, it said, were "seeking revenge" for the defeat of the system by the "faith and desire for freedom of the Polish people".
Fr Lombardi said: "The current wave of attacks against the Catholic Church in Poland appears to be the result of a strange alliance between those who were once the persecutors and other adversaries."
Jonathan Petre says the Church can expect to be implicated by more scandal
Daily Telegraph 8 January 2007
At the funeral of Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square nearly two years ago, millions of Poles chanted for the canonization of their nation's favourite son, not least as a tribute to his role in freeing them from communism.
The Pope was credited with undermining communism from within by using high-profile visits to his homeland and coded sermons to bolster the Solidarity movement.
Solidarity, with Lech Walesa at its head, eventually led to the overthrow of the Soviet-backed regime of General Jaruzelski in 1989.
But yesterday, they had to endure the shock and the humiliation of an archbishop resigning from one of the Polish Church's most senior posts following revelations about his collaboration with secret police during the communist-era.
The debacle reflects a profound crisis at the heart of the Polish Church as it struggles to rid itself of the ghosts of its past, and the ramifications may damage the authority of John Paul II's successor, Pope Benedict XVI.
According to some observers, the resignation of Mgr Stanislaw Wielgus could prove to be just the beginning of a painful bout of soul searching.
Further disclosures about the security services' penetration of the Church are expected to emerge over the coming months, and other bishops may be implicated. Mgr Wielgus has insisted that no one was harmed as a result of information he passed on.
He said he only co-operated with the secret police so that he would be allowed to travel abroad, a benefit to the Church at a time when it was isolated from the rest of the world.
He nevertheless appears to have been less prudent than the late John Paul II who, when he was Cardinal Carol Wojtyla of Cracow, urged his clergy to avoid any contact with the security forces if possible, and if not, to report it to a superior.
Critics of the Polish Church say that much of its current embarrassment could have been mitigated if it had confronted its past much earlier.
But such a potentially painful process may have been postponed partly to avoid distressing Pope John Paul II in his final years.
Now, they say, former communists who blame the Church for their downfall are manipulating the historical records as an act of revenge against the Church. Many will be surprised, however, that the scandal had not been foreseen by Pope Benedict XVI, as he was expected to be painstaking in his choice of bishops, following criticism of his predecessor's less scrupulous approach.
The Pope now has the difficult task of finding a successor whose record is beyond reproach if he is fully to restore faith in his judgment.
Communist-era links force out new Polish archbishop
Ian Traynor, Europe editor
Guardian January 8, 2007
One of the most senior clerics in Poland's Roman Catholic church was forced to resign yesterday 48 hours after becoming archbishop of Warsaw because of revelations that he had collaborated with communist security services for decades.
Draped in gold vestments and wearing a bishop's mitre, Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus told hundreds of worshippers at Warsaw's St John's Cathedral that he was stepping down, a decision applauded by the Vatican only a month after Pope Benedict XVI appointed him.
The cathedral Mass was to have been a ceremony of investiture for the cleric who took up the post on Friday.
The denouement to a fortnight of disclosures in the Polish press made the bishop the most prominent casualty of the centre-right government's determination to root out former communist collaborators in Poland, a campaign that has been criticised by liberals as a witchhunt.
Bishop Wielgus was forced to admit his relationship with the communist secret services until the collapse of communism in 1989 after initially denying newspaper allegations last week. The collaboration scandal also represented a fiasco for the Vatican which had initially sought to defend the appointment, but yesterday confirmed the bishop was right to resign.
Only on Friday the Vatican announced it had "every confidence" in the bishop, named last month by Pope Benedict to replace the Polish primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, as the archbishop of Warsaw.
Since the Pope appointed Bishop Wielgus as archbishop early last month, the Polish press has published copious detail on his alleged collaboration with the communists, said to have started in the 1960s when the clergyman was a student at the Catholic University of Lublin, an institution he later headed.
The respected newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, published documents from secret police archives showing that the bishop held dozens of meetings with communist security servicemen. The documents alleged he had reported on fellow clerics to the communists and a Polish church inquiry last Friday concluded there was "substantial" evidence Bishop Wielgus had shown "willingness for conscious and secret collaboration".
Until then, the bishop had denied the allegations. On Friday he admitted a track record of informing, regretted the earlier denials, but insisted his actions had not harmed anyone. He had talked to the communist services purely to be allowed to study abroad.
Broadly seen as a patriotic bulwark that rallied Poland to defeat the communists, the Polish church has been rocked since John Paul's death in 2005 by revelations of how the communists penetrated the Vatican under the Polish pope.
Cardinal Glemp sought to defend the bishop, telling the congregation "Wielgus was forced by harassment, shouts and threats to become a collaborator. Today a judgment was passed on Bishop Wielgus. But what kind of judgment was it, based on some documents and shreds of paper photocopied three times over? We do not want such judgments."
Archbishop of Warsaw resigns over secret police spy scandal
Stephen Castle, Europe Correspondent
Independent 08 January 2007
The Archbishop of Warsaw resigned less than an hour before a mass marking his installation, after revelations that he co-operated with Communist-era secret police plunged Poland's Roman Catholic Church into crisis.
Stanislaw Wielgus appeared to fight back the tears as he made his announcement in St John's Cathedral in Warsaw. It ended a scandal that has divided the country, embarrassed the Vatican and dealt a blow to Poland's highly influential church.
Earlier he had denied he was a spy but admitted he had agreed to communicate with the secret police because he feared refusal to do so would have threatened his studies. The actions had, he conceded, failed to show "decent prudence, courage and determination".
The dispute has reopened wounds from the years of struggle against Poland's Communist regime. While the Catholic Church was a source of support for the Solidarity democracy campaigners, some historians estimate that about one in 10 members of the clergy collaborated with the government of the time.
Yesterday Archbishop Wielgus, 67, bowed to growing anger among the public and stood down minutes before the ceremony Shaking visibly, he said: "I place my resignation from the post of Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw in Your Holiness's hands." While the announcement was greeted by applause, some among the congregation shouted "no" and "stay with us".
Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation, according to a statement half an hour earlier from the Vatican's mission in Poland. The Vatican has asked Cardinal Jozef Glemp, Archbishop Wielgus's predecessor, to return to his post temporarily.
Yesterday's ceremony, attended by the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, became a service in honour of Cardinal Glemp who defended the outgoing Archbishop. He said: "Today, a trial of Archbishop Wielgus took place. What kind of trial was it? Based on bits of papers, copies of copies of some documents. We don't want such trials."
Nevertheless the unprecedented departure seems to have been forced by pressure from the public and politicians. More than half of the 1,024 people questioned in a survey for the broadcaster TVN said they were against the nomination after learning about the collaboration with the secret service.
Moreover the scandal has coincided with a renewed push by the right-wing government led by the Law and Justice Party to purge from public office those deemed to have co-operated with the Communist authorities. Mr Kaczynski applauded after the Archbishop announced his resignation. The President hascalled for those who co-operated with the Communists to be on rooted out of national life.
Andrzej Paczkowski, a historian who was asked by Poland's human rights ombudsman to investigate allegations that Archbishop Wielgus was a spy, said last week there was evidence that he had such a role in the 1970s. Poland's Catholic Church Historical Commission said he had co-operated with the secret services before the collapse of Communism.
In a statement last month the Vatican said it took into account "all of the circumstances" of the Archbishop's life "including those regarding his past" when it appointed him.
The Pope made no comment on the resignation when addressing Polish pilgrims at St Peter's Square in Vatican City.
A spokesman for the Polish episcopate said the legal basis for the resignation was part of church law requiring a bishop to stand down if he is "unable to properly exercise his office [and therefore] is strongly requested to submit his resignation".
Archbishop who spied for secret police resigns minutes before inauguration
Roger Boyes
Times 8 January 2007
Angry cries of “Stay with us!” echoed around Warsaw Cathedral yesterday as a tearful, shaking Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus bowed to political pressure and announced his resignation because of his former involvement with the Polish communist secret service.
It was a moment of extraordinary theatre that symbolised some of the deep rifts running through the Church leadership in one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic countries. It left many Polish commentators doubting the judgment of Pope Benedict XVI, who over the weekend retracted his support for the compromised Archbishop.
Until 30 minutes before his planned inaugural Mass it seemed that the Archbishop would be sworn in as Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw.
On Friday the 67-year-old priest had admitted co-operating with the secret police and confessed that he had not told the whole truth about his past when rumours started to circulate a fortnight ago. Scholarly churchman claimed that none of the information that he had passed on had damaged any individual. Moreover, the Vatican was still expressing “full confidence” in its candidate for one of the most powerful positions in the Church hierarchy.
The Archbishop, however, seemed to be counting too heavily on the personal support of the Pope. In his statement, read out in churches on Saturday, he said: “Today before you I confess this mistake made many years ago, as I have already confessed to the Holy Father.”
Vatican officials were alarmed that the Pope’s name was being used in a way that could rip asunder the Polish Church leadership. Some leading lights of the Church — including the anti-communist veteran Archbishop Tadeusz Goclowski of Gdansk — had declined to attend the installation service because of “other engagements”.
On Saturday night crisis talks were held between the Vatican, the Polish Church leadership and the Government. The lights burnt late in the Warsaw residence of Josef Kowalczyk, the Papal Nuncio. According to a Church source, there was also a long conversation between the Pope and Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Metropolitan Archbishop of Krakow and one of the closest advisers to Pope John Paul II.
One of the key questions for Polish public opinion has been whether the tarnished Archbishop — who was recruited formally by the police in 1973 — spied on the Polish Pope. So far the files suggest not, but many documents have been destroyed and the uncertainty about his past lingers.
The outcome of Saturday night’s talks was that the Pope would accept the Archbishop’s “resignation” if offered. Soon after dawn yesterday a statement was agreed and it was released at 10.27am — barely 30 minutes before the ceremony.
The protocol of the Mass was changed quickly and it became an improvised service of thanksgiving for Cardinal Josef Glemp, the outgoing Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw. He will now stay in office until the crisis has been settled. Archbishop Wielgus is likely to retain his title but will not head the Warsaw Archdiocese.
Most of yesterday’s congregation knew nothing of the behind-the-scenes horse-trading. Outside the cathedral, supporters of the Archbishop had to push past other Catholics demanding his resignation. The cathedral was full; the atmosphere electric. When the Archbishop announced his resignation at the altar, “after deep reflection and consideration of my personal situation”, there was a collective gasp. Some of the congregation yelled: “No!” Then, after a short pause, there was ragged applause led by President Lech Kaczynski, who has made clear from the beginning that the Archbishop should go.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s top spokesman, said that Archbishop Wielgus’s conduct had “gravely compromised his authority” and his resignation was an “adequate solution”. The episode was a “moment of great suffering for the Church,” he added.
The hunting down of former police collaborators — from school teachers to ministers — has been a hallmark of the ruling twin brothers. The Pope, perhaps resenting a political attempt to interfere with Church policy, ignored the pleas and nominated the Archbishop on December 6. Soon afterwards, secret police documents were leaked to the press.
As a result, one of the most religiously motivated Governments in Europe finds itself in an icy relationship with the Vatican. And the Poles, who enthusiastically accepted Joseph Ratzinger as successor to Pope John Paul II, are beginning to wonder about his judgment.
See also Ruth Gledhill’s (Times’ Religious correspondent) blog on http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2007/01/should_this_man.html#more
New Warsaw Archbishop Quits Over Communist Collaboration
Craig S Smith
New York Times 8 January 2007
WARSAW, Jan. 7 — The newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, abruptly resigned on Sunday at a Mass meant to celebrate his new position after having admitted two days earlier that he had worked with the Polish Communist-era secret police.
There is no direct evidence that Bishop Wielgus spied on any of his fellow clergy members. But the revelation and the resignation have shaken one of Europe’s largest concentrations of Catholics and refocused scrutiny on collaboration with the Communist government by some of the clergy in Poland even as the church was supporting dissidents trying to free themselves from that political system.
Moments before he was to symbolically ascend to his new place in the church hierarchy by taking his seat on the archbishop’s throne at St. John’s Cathedral in Warsaw, Bishop Wielgus read from a letter he had sent Pope Benedict XVI earlier in the day offering his resignation “after reflecting deeply and assessing my personal situation.”
A roar of shock arose from the crowd inside the cathedral and stunned many people watching the proceedings live on television. The Vatican had announced the resignation a half hour earlier, though few had heard the news.
“Stay with us, we want you here!” people in the church shouted as a clearly troubled Bishop Wielgus removed his glasses and sat down beside Warsaw’s departing archbishop, Cardinal Jozef Glemp.
The Vatican reappointed Cardinal Glemp to the position until a new archbishop could be found, and he took the throne instead. But Cardinal Glemp, who supported Bishop Wielgus’s promotion, was also clearly troubled by the sudden turn of events and defended him later in his homily.
The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, who was sitting at the front of the congregation, applauded Bishop Wielgus’s resignation then stopped, apparently realizing that the commotion from the crowd was overwhelmingly against it. Mr. Kaczynski has led the country’s renewed efforts to expose former Communist secret police agents and their informants.
Outside the cathedral, scuffles erupted between supporters and detractors of the bishop among the hundreds of Catholics gathered beneath umbrellas in the rain. Some of his supporters shouted that “Jews” were trying to destroy the church. Anti-Semitism, long present in Poland, is a particular problem within some conservative branches of the Polish Catholic church.
The resignation of an archbishop, or even a bishop, so soon after an appointment is rare, if not unprecedented, and raises questions about how he could have been given the job with such serious doubts surrounding his past.
Bishop Wielgus, 67, had tried to minimize reports of his collaboration, which surfaced two weeks after the pope appointed him to the post on Dec. 6. He insisted that his contacts with the country’s feared Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or Security Service, were benign and routine.
Bishop Wielgus may have believed that there were no longer documents linking him to the secret police. Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, who served as chief of secret services and minister of internal affairs during the Communist years, told the Polish clergy in the early 1990s that all files related to them had been destroyed, according to Andrzej Jonas, editor of the Warsaw Voice, a weekly newsmagazine. But microfilm of some of the documents on Bishop Wielgus survived. They do not include any reports written by the bishop, though in one document a secret police agent praised him for providing information on fellow priests while teaching at the Catholic University of Lublin. He admitted deeper involvement Friday after the Polish news media published the documents, though he maintained that he did not spy on anyone or hurt anyone. Two groups of experts, one from the church, said the documents proved his willingness to work for the secret police even though they did not prove what he did.
That judgment set in motion negotiations with the Vatican that ended with his resignation. In its statement, the Vatican said the charges surrounding Bishop Wielgus had “gravely compromised his authority.”
Allegations that the secret service archives contained incriminating documents concerning Bishop Wielgus first appeared in the Polish media in the middle of 2006, shortly after he was mentioned as a potential successor to Cardinal Glemp. The documents that led to his resignation had been located by Dec. 20, when the Polish news media began reporting their contents.
Still, the Vatican was sufficiently confident of Bishop Wielgus’s innocence to allow him to take the canonical vows for the post Friday. It even reissued a statement saying that it had taken into account “all the circumstances of his life, including those regarding his past,” and that Pope Benedict had “every confidence” in him.
Many people believe that the pope changed his mind only after personally reviewing the documents in question or at the urging of Polish government officials.
“Definitely there must have been somebody very high up, maybe the president, who was in touch with the Vatican,” said Zbigniew Lewicki, a professor at the University of Warsaw. “Otherwise, why would he have changed his mind without anything new surfacing.”
It is the second major miscalculation by Pope Benedict since he was chosen as pontiff in April 2005. In September, he caused an uproar among Muslims with a speech he gave in Germany that seemed to equate Islam with violence.
Any cooperation between the Polish clergy and the secret police is troubling to Poles because the church under the Polish-born pope, John Paul II, was considered a beacon of hope and encouragement to people opposing the Communists.
That the head of the Warsaw archdiocese could be a former Communist collaborator would have been a cruel twist for many people here who remember the murder of Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, one of the first priests from the influential archdiocese to support the pro-democracy Solidarity movement. He was beaten to death by police agents in 1984. They dumped his body in a reservoir.
Poland screened thousands of people for past Communist collaboration in the early 1990s, but the process lost momentum until President Kaczynski revived it last year. He has argued that the country’s 1989 transition left much of the Communist apparatus in place, fueling corruption and distorting democracy. He says society cannot move forward without breaking with that past.
But many people argue that the secret police files are in many cases too incomplete or unreliable for conclusive judgments and are too easily manipulated for political ends.
It was not clear what Bishop Wielgus would do in the wake of the resignation. The bishop said his contact with the secret police started when he applied to study in what was then West Germany.
He spent 1973-75 at the University of Munich and went there again in 1978 when Pope Benedict, then Joseph Ratzinger, was teaching there. He spent the rest of his career teaching philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin, where he served three terms as rector. Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of Plock, north of Warsaw, in 1999 and he served in that post until being appointed archbishop of Warsaw.
The drama over Bishop Wielgus was, in part, a battle between opposing forces in the Polish church — mirrored in societies across the post-Soviet bloc — between those willing to forgive and forget and those who insist that past Communist collaborators be exposed and be excluded from positions of authority.
“Today a judgment was passed on Bishop Wielgus,” said Cardinal Glemp in a homily defending the prelate that was interrupted repeatedly by applause. “But what kind of judgment was it, based on shreds of paper photocopied three times over? We do not want such judgments.”
Had the church managed to keep Bishop Wielgus in his new job, the program to purge former collaborators would have been severely weakened, Mr. Jonas of the Warsaw Voice said.
“It wouldn’t be possible to accuse somebody or blame somebody for being a spy or former member of the secret service if the archbishop of Warsaw was himself one,” he said.
Matthew Day in Warsaw and Malcolm Moore in Rome
Daily Telegraph 8 January 2007
The Archbishop of Warsaw resigned yesterday minutes before he was due to celebrate his inaugural mass, after admitting that he had been an informant for Poland's communist-era secret police.
Mgr Stanislaw Wielgus, who was appointed archbishop of the Polish capital last Friday, tearfully read out his resignation to cries of disbelief from the congregation in Warsaw Cathedral.
"Stay with us," shouted several worshippers, despite repeated calls for quiet. Outside, many of the conservative supporters of Mgr Wielgus jostled and exchanged insults with a handful of demonstrators opposing the archbishop's appointment.
After initially denying that he had any links with the Cold War secret services, Mgr Wielgus admitted last Friday that he had been a collaborator after two independent commissions condemned him.
His accusers say he was first approached when studying at Lublin University in 1967, and was referred to by his spy masters as either Agent Grey or Adam Wisocki.
He was allegedly asked to keep tabs on the "antisocial activities" of other priests and was once asked to infiltrate the Polish office of Radio Free Europe, an assignment he declined.
His dramatic resignation came after overnight talks between the Vatican and the Polish government. Previously, the Vatican had supported Mgr Wielgus, declaring before Christmas that Pope Benedict had been "fully aware" of all the details of the priest's past before making his choice.
However, the prospect of a split within the Polish Catholic Church finally convinced the Vatican to abandon its nominee on Saturday night.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope's spokesman, said yesterday: "The behaviour of Mgr Wielgus in the former years of the communist regime in Poland has severely compromised his authority.
"The relinquishment of his position in Warsaw and the Pope's ready acceptance of his resignation appeared to be an adequate solution, despite his humble and moving request for a pardon."
Just before the beginning of the service, the Vatican's embassy in Poland issued a statement saying that the Pope had asked Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the former Archbishop of Warsaw and a key figure in the country's struggle against communist rule, to resume his role temporarily until "further decisions have been made".
Inside the cathedral, there were chaotic scenes as Cardinal Glemp defended his colleague and suggested that he had not lost the support of the higher levels of the Polish Church.
Addressing hundreds of worshippers, he said the judgment against Mgr Wielgus was based on "scraps of papers and documents" and added that "this is not the kind of judgment we need".
His remarks, in front of Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski, and Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwicsw, the former private secretary of Pope John Paul II, were frequently interrupted by applause.
The scandal will increase pressure on the Polish Church to confront the issue of how many clergy worked for the communist secret police. One Vatican source suggested yesterday that "as many as 15 per cent" of priests in the former communist bloc had collaborated with the regime.
However, the Vatican pinned the blame firmly on former communists who, it said, were "seeking revenge" for the defeat of the system by the "faith and desire for freedom of the Polish people".
Fr Lombardi said: "The current wave of attacks against the Catholic Church in Poland appears to be the result of a strange alliance between those who were once the persecutors and other adversaries."
Jonathan Petre says the Church can expect to be implicated by more scandal
Daily Telegraph 8 January 2007
At the funeral of Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Square nearly two years ago, millions of Poles chanted for the canonization of their nation's favourite son, not least as a tribute to his role in freeing them from communism.
The Pope was credited with undermining communism from within by using high-profile visits to his homeland and coded sermons to bolster the Solidarity movement.
Solidarity, with Lech Walesa at its head, eventually led to the overthrow of the Soviet-backed regime of General Jaruzelski in 1989.
But yesterday, they had to endure the shock and the humiliation of an archbishop resigning from one of the Polish Church's most senior posts following revelations about his collaboration with secret police during the communist-era.
The debacle reflects a profound crisis at the heart of the Polish Church as it struggles to rid itself of the ghosts of its past, and the ramifications may damage the authority of John Paul II's successor, Pope Benedict XVI.
According to some observers, the resignation of Mgr Stanislaw Wielgus could prove to be just the beginning of a painful bout of soul searching.
Further disclosures about the security services' penetration of the Church are expected to emerge over the coming months, and other bishops may be implicated. Mgr Wielgus has insisted that no one was harmed as a result of information he passed on.
He said he only co-operated with the secret police so that he would be allowed to travel abroad, a benefit to the Church at a time when it was isolated from the rest of the world.
He nevertheless appears to have been less prudent than the late John Paul II who, when he was Cardinal Carol Wojtyla of Cracow, urged his clergy to avoid any contact with the security forces if possible, and if not, to report it to a superior.
Critics of the Polish Church say that much of its current embarrassment could have been mitigated if it had confronted its past much earlier.
But such a potentially painful process may have been postponed partly to avoid distressing Pope John Paul II in his final years.
Now, they say, former communists who blame the Church for their downfall are manipulating the historical records as an act of revenge against the Church. Many will be surprised, however, that the scandal had not been foreseen by Pope Benedict XVI, as he was expected to be painstaking in his choice of bishops, following criticism of his predecessor's less scrupulous approach.
The Pope now has the difficult task of finding a successor whose record is beyond reproach if he is fully to restore faith in his judgment.
Communist-era links force out new Polish archbishop
Ian Traynor, Europe editor
Guardian January 8, 2007
One of the most senior clerics in Poland's Roman Catholic church was forced to resign yesterday 48 hours after becoming archbishop of Warsaw because of revelations that he had collaborated with communist security services for decades.
Draped in gold vestments and wearing a bishop's mitre, Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus told hundreds of worshippers at Warsaw's St John's Cathedral that he was stepping down, a decision applauded by the Vatican only a month after Pope Benedict XVI appointed him.
The cathedral Mass was to have been a ceremony of investiture for the cleric who took up the post on Friday.
The denouement to a fortnight of disclosures in the Polish press made the bishop the most prominent casualty of the centre-right government's determination to root out former communist collaborators in Poland, a campaign that has been criticised by liberals as a witchhunt.
Bishop Wielgus was forced to admit his relationship with the communist secret services until the collapse of communism in 1989 after initially denying newspaper allegations last week. The collaboration scandal also represented a fiasco for the Vatican which had initially sought to defend the appointment, but yesterday confirmed the bishop was right to resign.
Only on Friday the Vatican announced it had "every confidence" in the bishop, named last month by Pope Benedict to replace the Polish primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, as the archbishop of Warsaw.
Since the Pope appointed Bishop Wielgus as archbishop early last month, the Polish press has published copious detail on his alleged collaboration with the communists, said to have started in the 1960s when the clergyman was a student at the Catholic University of Lublin, an institution he later headed.
The respected newspaper, Rzeczpospolita, published documents from secret police archives showing that the bishop held dozens of meetings with communist security servicemen. The documents alleged he had reported on fellow clerics to the communists and a Polish church inquiry last Friday concluded there was "substantial" evidence Bishop Wielgus had shown "willingness for conscious and secret collaboration".
Until then, the bishop had denied the allegations. On Friday he admitted a track record of informing, regretted the earlier denials, but insisted his actions had not harmed anyone. He had talked to the communist services purely to be allowed to study abroad.
Broadly seen as a patriotic bulwark that rallied Poland to defeat the communists, the Polish church has been rocked since John Paul's death in 2005 by revelations of how the communists penetrated the Vatican under the Polish pope.
Cardinal Glemp sought to defend the bishop, telling the congregation "Wielgus was forced by harassment, shouts and threats to become a collaborator. Today a judgment was passed on Bishop Wielgus. But what kind of judgment was it, based on some documents and shreds of paper photocopied three times over? We do not want such judgments."
Archbishop of Warsaw resigns over secret police spy scandal
Stephen Castle, Europe Correspondent
Independent 08 January 2007
The Archbishop of Warsaw resigned less than an hour before a mass marking his installation, after revelations that he co-operated with Communist-era secret police plunged Poland's Roman Catholic Church into crisis.
Stanislaw Wielgus appeared to fight back the tears as he made his announcement in St John's Cathedral in Warsaw. It ended a scandal that has divided the country, embarrassed the Vatican and dealt a blow to Poland's highly influential church.
Earlier he had denied he was a spy but admitted he had agreed to communicate with the secret police because he feared refusal to do so would have threatened his studies. The actions had, he conceded, failed to show "decent prudence, courage and determination".
The dispute has reopened wounds from the years of struggle against Poland's Communist regime. While the Catholic Church was a source of support for the Solidarity democracy campaigners, some historians estimate that about one in 10 members of the clergy collaborated with the government of the time.
Yesterday Archbishop Wielgus, 67, bowed to growing anger among the public and stood down minutes before the ceremony Shaking visibly, he said: "I place my resignation from the post of Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw in Your Holiness's hands." While the announcement was greeted by applause, some among the congregation shouted "no" and "stay with us".
Pope Benedict XVI accepted the resignation, according to a statement half an hour earlier from the Vatican's mission in Poland. The Vatican has asked Cardinal Jozef Glemp, Archbishop Wielgus's predecessor, to return to his post temporarily.
Yesterday's ceremony, attended by the Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, became a service in honour of Cardinal Glemp who defended the outgoing Archbishop. He said: "Today, a trial of Archbishop Wielgus took place. What kind of trial was it? Based on bits of papers, copies of copies of some documents. We don't want such trials."
Nevertheless the unprecedented departure seems to have been forced by pressure from the public and politicians. More than half of the 1,024 people questioned in a survey for the broadcaster TVN said they were against the nomination after learning about the collaboration with the secret service.
Moreover the scandal has coincided with a renewed push by the right-wing government led by the Law and Justice Party to purge from public office those deemed to have co-operated with the Communist authorities. Mr Kaczynski applauded after the Archbishop announced his resignation. The President hascalled for those who co-operated with the Communists to be on rooted out of national life.
Andrzej Paczkowski, a historian who was asked by Poland's human rights ombudsman to investigate allegations that Archbishop Wielgus was a spy, said last week there was evidence that he had such a role in the 1970s. Poland's Catholic Church Historical Commission said he had co-operated with the secret services before the collapse of Communism.
In a statement last month the Vatican said it took into account "all of the circumstances" of the Archbishop's life "including those regarding his past" when it appointed him.
The Pope made no comment on the resignation when addressing Polish pilgrims at St Peter's Square in Vatican City.
A spokesman for the Polish episcopate said the legal basis for the resignation was part of church law requiring a bishop to stand down if he is "unable to properly exercise his office [and therefore] is strongly requested to submit his resignation".
Archbishop who spied for secret police resigns minutes before inauguration
Roger Boyes
Times 8 January 2007
Angry cries of “Stay with us!” echoed around Warsaw Cathedral yesterday as a tearful, shaking Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus bowed to political pressure and announced his resignation because of his former involvement with the Polish communist secret service.
It was a moment of extraordinary theatre that symbolised some of the deep rifts running through the Church leadership in one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic countries. It left many Polish commentators doubting the judgment of Pope Benedict XVI, who over the weekend retracted his support for the compromised Archbishop.
Until 30 minutes before his planned inaugural Mass it seemed that the Archbishop would be sworn in as Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw.
On Friday the 67-year-old priest had admitted co-operating with the secret police and confessed that he had not told the whole truth about his past when rumours started to circulate a fortnight ago. Scholarly churchman claimed that none of the information that he had passed on had damaged any individual. Moreover, the Vatican was still expressing “full confidence” in its candidate for one of the most powerful positions in the Church hierarchy.
The Archbishop, however, seemed to be counting too heavily on the personal support of the Pope. In his statement, read out in churches on Saturday, he said: “Today before you I confess this mistake made many years ago, as I have already confessed to the Holy Father.”
Vatican officials were alarmed that the Pope’s name was being used in a way that could rip asunder the Polish Church leadership. Some leading lights of the Church — including the anti-communist veteran Archbishop Tadeusz Goclowski of Gdansk — had declined to attend the installation service because of “other engagements”.
On Saturday night crisis talks were held between the Vatican, the Polish Church leadership and the Government. The lights burnt late in the Warsaw residence of Josef Kowalczyk, the Papal Nuncio. According to a Church source, there was also a long conversation between the Pope and Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Metropolitan Archbishop of Krakow and one of the closest advisers to Pope John Paul II.
One of the key questions for Polish public opinion has been whether the tarnished Archbishop — who was recruited formally by the police in 1973 — spied on the Polish Pope. So far the files suggest not, but many documents have been destroyed and the uncertainty about his past lingers.
The outcome of Saturday night’s talks was that the Pope would accept the Archbishop’s “resignation” if offered. Soon after dawn yesterday a statement was agreed and it was released at 10.27am — barely 30 minutes before the ceremony.
The protocol of the Mass was changed quickly and it became an improvised service of thanksgiving for Cardinal Josef Glemp, the outgoing Metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw. He will now stay in office until the crisis has been settled. Archbishop Wielgus is likely to retain his title but will not head the Warsaw Archdiocese.
Most of yesterday’s congregation knew nothing of the behind-the-scenes horse-trading. Outside the cathedral, supporters of the Archbishop had to push past other Catholics demanding his resignation. The cathedral was full; the atmosphere electric. When the Archbishop announced his resignation at the altar, “after deep reflection and consideration of my personal situation”, there was a collective gasp. Some of the congregation yelled: “No!” Then, after a short pause, there was ragged applause led by President Lech Kaczynski, who has made clear from the beginning that the Archbishop should go.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican’s top spokesman, said that Archbishop Wielgus’s conduct had “gravely compromised his authority” and his resignation was an “adequate solution”. The episode was a “moment of great suffering for the Church,” he added.
The hunting down of former police collaborators — from school teachers to ministers — has been a hallmark of the ruling twin brothers. The Pope, perhaps resenting a political attempt to interfere with Church policy, ignored the pleas and nominated the Archbishop on December 6. Soon afterwards, secret police documents were leaked to the press.
As a result, one of the most religiously motivated Governments in Europe finds itself in an icy relationship with the Vatican. And the Poles, who enthusiastically accepted Joseph Ratzinger as successor to Pope John Paul II, are beginning to wonder about his judgment.
See also Ruth Gledhill’s (Times’ Religious correspondent) blog on http://timescolumns.typepad.com/gledhill/2007/01/should_this_man.html#more
New Warsaw Archbishop Quits Over Communist Collaboration
Craig S Smith
New York Times 8 January 2007
WARSAW, Jan. 7 — The newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, abruptly resigned on Sunday at a Mass meant to celebrate his new position after having admitted two days earlier that he had worked with the Polish Communist-era secret police.
There is no direct evidence that Bishop Wielgus spied on any of his fellow clergy members. But the revelation and the resignation have shaken one of Europe’s largest concentrations of Catholics and refocused scrutiny on collaboration with the Communist government by some of the clergy in Poland even as the church was supporting dissidents trying to free themselves from that political system.
Moments before he was to symbolically ascend to his new place in the church hierarchy by taking his seat on the archbishop’s throne at St. John’s Cathedral in Warsaw, Bishop Wielgus read from a letter he had sent Pope Benedict XVI earlier in the day offering his resignation “after reflecting deeply and assessing my personal situation.”
A roar of shock arose from the crowd inside the cathedral and stunned many people watching the proceedings live on television. The Vatican had announced the resignation a half hour earlier, though few had heard the news.
“Stay with us, we want you here!” people in the church shouted as a clearly troubled Bishop Wielgus removed his glasses and sat down beside Warsaw’s departing archbishop, Cardinal Jozef Glemp.
The Vatican reappointed Cardinal Glemp to the position until a new archbishop could be found, and he took the throne instead. But Cardinal Glemp, who supported Bishop Wielgus’s promotion, was also clearly troubled by the sudden turn of events and defended him later in his homily.
The Polish president, Lech Kaczynski, who was sitting at the front of the congregation, applauded Bishop Wielgus’s resignation then stopped, apparently realizing that the commotion from the crowd was overwhelmingly against it. Mr. Kaczynski has led the country’s renewed efforts to expose former Communist secret police agents and their informants.
Outside the cathedral, scuffles erupted between supporters and detractors of the bishop among the hundreds of Catholics gathered beneath umbrellas in the rain. Some of his supporters shouted that “Jews” were trying to destroy the church. Anti-Semitism, long present in Poland, is a particular problem within some conservative branches of the Polish Catholic church.
The resignation of an archbishop, or even a bishop, so soon after an appointment is rare, if not unprecedented, and raises questions about how he could have been given the job with such serious doubts surrounding his past.
Bishop Wielgus, 67, had tried to minimize reports of his collaboration, which surfaced two weeks after the pope appointed him to the post on Dec. 6. He insisted that his contacts with the country’s feared Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or Security Service, were benign and routine.
Bishop Wielgus may have believed that there were no longer documents linking him to the secret police. Gen. Czeslaw Kiszczak, who served as chief of secret services and minister of internal affairs during the Communist years, told the Polish clergy in the early 1990s that all files related to them had been destroyed, according to Andrzej Jonas, editor of the Warsaw Voice, a weekly newsmagazine. But microfilm of some of the documents on Bishop Wielgus survived. They do not include any reports written by the bishop, though in one document a secret police agent praised him for providing information on fellow priests while teaching at the Catholic University of Lublin. He admitted deeper involvement Friday after the Polish news media published the documents, though he maintained that he did not spy on anyone or hurt anyone. Two groups of experts, one from the church, said the documents proved his willingness to work for the secret police even though they did not prove what he did.
That judgment set in motion negotiations with the Vatican that ended with his resignation. In its statement, the Vatican said the charges surrounding Bishop Wielgus had “gravely compromised his authority.”
Allegations that the secret service archives contained incriminating documents concerning Bishop Wielgus first appeared in the Polish media in the middle of 2006, shortly after he was mentioned as a potential successor to Cardinal Glemp. The documents that led to his resignation had been located by Dec. 20, when the Polish news media began reporting their contents.
Still, the Vatican was sufficiently confident of Bishop Wielgus’s innocence to allow him to take the canonical vows for the post Friday. It even reissued a statement saying that it had taken into account “all the circumstances of his life, including those regarding his past,” and that Pope Benedict had “every confidence” in him.
Many people believe that the pope changed his mind only after personally reviewing the documents in question or at the urging of Polish government officials.
“Definitely there must have been somebody very high up, maybe the president, who was in touch with the Vatican,” said Zbigniew Lewicki, a professor at the University of Warsaw. “Otherwise, why would he have changed his mind without anything new surfacing.”
It is the second major miscalculation by Pope Benedict since he was chosen as pontiff in April 2005. In September, he caused an uproar among Muslims with a speech he gave in Germany that seemed to equate Islam with violence.
Any cooperation between the Polish clergy and the secret police is troubling to Poles because the church under the Polish-born pope, John Paul II, was considered a beacon of hope and encouragement to people opposing the Communists.
That the head of the Warsaw archdiocese could be a former Communist collaborator would have been a cruel twist for many people here who remember the murder of Rev. Jerzy Popieluszko, one of the first priests from the influential archdiocese to support the pro-democracy Solidarity movement. He was beaten to death by police agents in 1984. They dumped his body in a reservoir.
Poland screened thousands of people for past Communist collaboration in the early 1990s, but the process lost momentum until President Kaczynski revived it last year. He has argued that the country’s 1989 transition left much of the Communist apparatus in place, fueling corruption and distorting democracy. He says society cannot move forward without breaking with that past.
But many people argue that the secret police files are in many cases too incomplete or unreliable for conclusive judgments and are too easily manipulated for political ends.
It was not clear what Bishop Wielgus would do in the wake of the resignation. The bishop said his contact with the secret police started when he applied to study in what was then West Germany.
He spent 1973-75 at the University of Munich and went there again in 1978 when Pope Benedict, then Joseph Ratzinger, was teaching there. He spent the rest of his career teaching philosophy at the Catholic University of Lublin, where he served three terms as rector. Pope John Paul II appointed him bishop of Plock, north of Warsaw, in 1999 and he served in that post until being appointed archbishop of Warsaw.
The drama over Bishop Wielgus was, in part, a battle between opposing forces in the Polish church — mirrored in societies across the post-Soviet bloc — between those willing to forgive and forget and those who insist that past Communist collaborators be exposed and be excluded from positions of authority.
“Today a judgment was passed on Bishop Wielgus,” said Cardinal Glemp in a homily defending the prelate that was interrupted repeatedly by applause. “But what kind of judgment was it, based on shreds of paper photocopied three times over? We do not want such judgments.”
Had the church managed to keep Bishop Wielgus in his new job, the program to purge former collaborators would have been severely weakened, Mr. Jonas of the Warsaw Voice said.
“It wouldn’t be possible to accuse somebody or blame somebody for being a spy or former member of the secret service if the archbishop of Warsaw was himself one,” he said.
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