Who should apologize?” “

After the fall of the Iron Curtain and with it the Communist regimes of the countries of Eastern Europe, and after some of them became members of the European Union on 1st May 2004, and even of NATO, the historical archives are now being re-opened and new light being shed on many domestic events and in particular on the connivance or collaboration between many sectors of society with the former Communist regimes. In recent weeks the news has broken that in some countries, such as Hungary and Slovakia, lists of those who collaborated with the secret police of the Communist regimes have been made known. They include the names of bishops, priests and ecclesiastics. The response of the episcopates to the accusations, in part unfounded and misinterpreted, has not been slow in coming. HUNGARY: spieS AND MARTYRS. 64 Hungarian Catholic priests, and even a bishop, who acted as spies during Communism? That is the allegation, documented by confidential documents, made by an Hungarian historian who has been resident in Germany for 40 years, Gabor Adrianyi, in an article published in a Hungarian monthly, in which he also accuses the Catholic Church of “not having apologized” after the change of regime. The response of the Hungarian Church has not been slow in coming. In a comment published on the Catholic portal Magyar Kurir, Bishop Andràs Veres, secretary of the Hungarian Bishops’ Conference, recalls that “during the Communist dictatorship monks and priests were regularly insulted” and “persecuted with particularly harsh methods, because atheism considered the Church its first great ideological enemy”. “Daily and weekly interrogations of priests – he says -, even with the use of physical force against them, were not rare. Intimidation was one of the main methods for maintaining the system. Many people were able to resist the most cruel tortures and every kind of tribulation”. But there were also others who, “under physical and mental compulsion, succumbed, became involved, and regularly presented reports on their service and on those who lived around them”. Msgr. Veres tells of some elderly priests who “were well known as spies in clerical circles”. “During church meetings – he says – those in the know usually took steps to warn others: ‘If they are here, don’t speak to them of this or that, because they are obliged to report on it'”. Bishop Veres also points out that, whereas the historian Adrianyi fled Hungary 40 years ago, “the Church would not have remained alive if everyone had fled”: “I don’t think that a person who has fled has the right to sit in judgement on someone, even if they haven’t demonstrated that they are heroes or martyrs”. As for the request for apologies, Bishop Veres says he knows of “cases in which priests have asked forgiveness from their fellow priests and I don’t think they ought to be obliged to do so in public”. “Those who ought to apologize, rather, are those who helped to keep that regime in life – he observes – and who humiliated these people, keeping them in a state of physical and mental terror. Some of them could still be in power in the present political scene”. SLOVAKIA: “WE CONDEMN, UNDERSTAND, BELIEVE”: That in short, according to their spokesman Marian Gavenda, is the position assumed by the Slovak bishops on the question of the priests and churchmen entered in the registers of collaborators of the secret police during the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia. The affair is filling the front pages of the country’s press and arousing heated debates after the lists of names in question were made public (cf. SIR no. 13/2005). The Slovak episcopate, meeting in its 50th plenary assembly on 22-23 February, explained its position as follows: “The bishops – Gavenda told SIR – divide collaborators into various categories accompanied by different judgements”. “We don’t deny that some priests may have collaborated with the secret police. We condemn them if they freely offered their services to secure a career, financial gain or to cause injury to others. Those, on the other hand, who collaborated because they were blackmailed for their misdemeanours or weaknesses of character, are worthy of compassion. We feel compassion for those who, after long investigations and inquiries by the police, dominated by fear, or animated by the good intention of saving what could be saved, accepted the role of collaboration. We believe those who deny they ever collaborated, who say they cannot explain their name in the lists, and who on the contrary were persecuted by the secret police”. The bishops, adds the spokesman, “ask the faithful for forgiveness for the scandal and for the harm caused by the real collaborators, but at the same time forcefully reaffirm that the majority of the clergy kept their faith and not a few became martyrs to it”. “Those really responsible – he concludes – are those who organized this whole persecution and who remain in the shadows. We invite all these persons to submit to “a purification according to the truth and in the truth: the sole truth that can guarantee the nation’s future”.