The historical commission of the metropolis of Katowice, after having examined the files concerning some 500 priests involved in pastoral service in the diocese, has revealed that only in 2 or 3 cases was their attitude to the security services of the Communist regime such as to justify the opening of an ecclesiastical procedure against them. The secret services registered as collaborators only 17 priests of the diocese, but, as underlined by the chairman of the commission Monsignor Stanislaw Sierla, this was always a subjective assessment by secret service officials. In fact, in the documentation analysed by the commission, no declaration of collaboration signed by a priest was found. During a press conference on 9 October, Msgr. Sierla said that among the 17 priests in question some could have caused harm to the Church, but more often, in his view, their conduct was one of imprudence. Many of these priests, he explained, as soon as they realized the collusive character of their contacts with secret service officers, had the courage to refuse any further contact. Msgr. Sierla also emphasized that some of the priests, in spite of repressive measures inflicted on them by the Communist authorities, were able to assume a heroic attitude to the regime. The Archbishop of Katowice Damian Zimon will now have to decide on the future of the few priests who could be accused of being collaborators, suspending them from the exercise of their pastoral duties in cases of grave guilt. The spokesman of the commission, the Rev. Pawel Buchta, reminded journalists: “the Church condemns evil, but entrusts those infected by it to God’s mercy”.
