POLAND
The announced publication of Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski’s book “Priests before the SB [Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa: the security service] in the Archdiocese of Krakow” has re-ignited the question of the collaboration, real or presumed, of members of the Polish clergy with the security services of the former Communist regime, following the resignation of the Archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus. Apart from recounting the experiences of a hundred or so priests of the archdiocese of Krakow, the author accuses some members of the present Polish episcopate of having actively collaborated with the Communist regime. One of them, Bishop Wiktor Skworc of Tarnow, already some months ago, publicly clarified the circumstances that had accompanied his contacts with the security services. Another of the bishops accused, Msgr. Juliusz Paetz, archbishop emeritus of Poznan, firmly rejects the accusations of collusion. The Church’s historical Commission, says a communiqué issued by the curia of Poznan, will check the “information concerning the collaboration of Msgr. Paetz with the intelligence services of Communist Poland”. The defence of Msgr. Kazimierz Gorny, currently bishop of Rzeszow, on the other hand, has been delegated to the diocesan historical Commission, which issued a communiqué on 27 February and declared it “had found no proof of any collaboration with the secret services of the People’s Republic of Poland in the documentation kept at the Institute of National Memory”. Cardinal Franciszek Macharski, former Archbishop of Krakow, Msgr. Wojciech Ziemba, Metropolitan Archbishop of Bialystok, Msgr. Kazimierz Nycz, Bishop of Koszalin-Kolobrzeg and Msgr. Jan Szkodon, auxiliary bishop of Krakow, on the other hand, are cited by Isakowicz-Zaleski as those who, in spite of numerous attempts of the intelligence services to involve them, rejected any form of collaboration with the former regime.
