Several pages of some of the publicly-available SB (Communist Polish Intelligence Services) files regarding informer-collaborator "Grey" (Wielgus) are available in Zip files here: File 1, File 2, File 3, in a total of 69 pages.Case proven, say historians
Documents have been found proving allegations that Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus was a knowing collaborator of the communist era secret services.
Agnieszka Bielawska reports
06.01.07
The allegations of the Archbishops’ cooperation appeared some two weeks ago in the Gazeta Polska weekly. Wielgus has called for the examination of his files in order to clear his name, but after two commissions began studying the documents more accusations followed in the media. The special commission set up by Poland’s ombudsman Janusz Kochanowski issued a statement that the documents leave no doubts that Archbishop Wielgus was an informant.
Andrzej Paczkowski a member of the commission.
"There is no field for discussion here. We can speak about motives, effects but the fact is there. This person was a conscious collaborator, but the documents do not state what this person really did. There are instructions, orders but no reports on the accomplished deeds."
Stanislaw Wielgus is to be sworn in as archbishop of the Warsaw diocese on Sunday but opinions prevail that he should resign and explain the proven facts. Tomasz Sakiewicz editor in chief of the Gazeta Polska, the first to raise the matter, says that such an explanation could avoid a serious crisis in the Polish church:
"It's never too late because I believe that Wielgus is responsible for the church and he knows that he caused the crisis. There was never such a crisis in the Polish church and many Polish Catholics believe that he should resign to avoid the crisis....”
The Polish church and the Vatican stand by Archbishop Wielgus, but the Polish churchgoers begin to have doubts. The accusations evoke unease among the faithful for whom the Church was a model of morality and the pillar of opposition to the communists. Tomasz Sakiewicz says that this situation, unless cleared up will undermine the credibility of the Church.
"Polish people stand by the church and believe their priests, but now everybody knows he is lying - it is even worse than his cooperation with the communists."
Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus is not the first high-ranking cleric to be accused of working with the communist era secret services. The Polish Church however was loath to open an internal probe, but research had been started by Father Tadeusz Issakowicz Zaleski.
He devoted a year studying the National remembrance Institute files which showed that only some 10% of the Polish clergy agreed to cooperate with the communists. Father Zaleski underlines that ... the former metropolitan of Krakow cardinal Franciszek Macharski or Archbishop Ziemba knew how to refuse the offers
"I think their examples show that the Polish priests could stand for their Church. They did not mind their church career but had other values to defend."
Father Zaleski is publishing a book about the invigilation of the Polish clergy by the communist secret services and devotes much space in it to those who had the courage to refuse the secret services. He is convinced that the case of Archbishop Wielgus has to be very carefully examined since now the archbishop has lost his credibility and may undermine the role he is to play as the Archbishop of the Warsaw diocese.
From this Saturday's edition of Il Giornale (Italian):
"Well - says Father Adam Boniecki, [who was] for eleven years the director of the Polish edition of L'Osservatore Romano - , the Vatican declaration of December 21 seemed strange" and maybe the Pope chose Wielgus without "a complete knowledge of the case. One fact is certain - adds Father Boniecki -, to be an archbishop of Warsaw with this introduction is a horrible thing" and Wielgus could find a way out by himself: "Asking, after a certain time, to be relieved of this charge."
