POLAND
The first results of the work of the Historical Commissions set up in all dioceses to conduct historical research on the period 1945-1990 and on the contacts of the Communist security services and churchmen are awaited at the end of February and early days of March. The first publications will concern the archdiocese of Krakow and the metropolitan dioceses of Szczecin and Kamieniec. The controversial book of the Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz Zaleski, dedicated to the contacts of the clergy of the archdiocese of Krakow with the secret services, is also expected to be published in late February. The publication of the material concerning the few nuns who agreed to collaborate with the Communist regime has also been announced. The bishop of Wloclawek, Wieslaw Merin, has appealed to the priests of his diocese: “I ask all priests who performed their pastoral work, or completed their formation in the diocesan seminary, in the years 1945-1990 to examine their conscience and evaluate their own attitude to the security services of the People’s Republic of Poland and other organizations of that period that were hostile to the Church”. Commenting on the attacks of the media against priests accused, often unjustly, of having collaborated with the Communist regime, the Archbishop of Wroclaw Marian Golebiewski recalled the case of Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz, a victim of persecution by the security services: “One may have the impression – he said – that priests and bishops were especially the traitors in those years, whereas 90 % or more of them were able to overcome the difficult trials to which they were subjected in an admirable way”.
