Warsaw’s Archbishop Resigns over Role as Communist Spy

Archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, didn’t quite make it to his inauguration as such. Half an hour before the ceremony, he resigned from the appointment by the Pope. It turns out that, despite his long-standing denials, he had been a spy for the communist government of Poland. In addition to being a Catholic priest, he was a member of the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa; SB is Polish for KGB.

Initially, he had claimed that the “collaborated” only so he could travel abroad and further his career; “If you wanted a passport, you couldn’t tell the secret service to get lost” he rightly said in an interview. Hardly a noble stand, but hardly one that very many in the same position would reject. However, it appears that this was a lie. Gazeta Polska, a newspaper comfortably to the right, published a 68-page file recently exposing his status with the SB. On Friday, the Church’s committee looking into this reported, “There exist numerous, important documents which show that Father Stanislaw Wielgus said he was ready to collaborate, in a conscious and secret manner, with the communist security services, and that he had begun that collaboration.”

In a communist society, informing on one’s fellows was/is expected. Historian say about 15% of the Polish clergy did just that. However, the documents reveal that Father Stanislaw went much further. The Polish media report, he was given “special training for agents.” Indeed, the very year that Karol Wojtyla became Pope, Father Stanislaw was positioned to infiltrate Radio Free Europe for the benefit of the regimes that made Radio Free Europe necessary in the first place.

The damage this does to the Catholic Church in Poland and other former Soviet Bloc nations is hard to determine. While there is a perception that Poland is a border-line theocracy with priests everywhere, the facts belie that. Church attendance in the cities is down to about 25%, and 70% of Poland’s Catholics don’t believe in hell. Two-thirds find nothing wrong with premarital sex, and 75% reject the Church’s teachings on artificial insemination. Indeed, one can foresee a future not dissimilar to Italy or France, where “Catholic” doesn’t mean more than a family’s historic ties to a building on Sundays.

What is easier to determine is the effect this will have on the papacy of Benedict XVI. Already seen as a caretaker, with the impossible role of John Paul II’s successor, one begins to wonder if he is capable of doing anything to boost the Church’s reputation. Some reports claim he never even asked to look at Stanislaw Wielgus’ files before making the appointment. That doesn’t presage anything good, especially since he grew up in Nazi Germany where similar compromises were common enough. It gives detractors too much ammunition.

© Copyright 2007 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

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