Mgr. Michalik (Przemysl): “I have never collaborated with the communist regime”

“I have never collaborated with the secret services of the communist regime. I have never signed any pledge to collaborate, I have never accepted any gifts or remunerations”. This was stated yesterday by mgr. Józef Michalik, president of the Polish Bishops Conference and archbishop of Przemysl, after he was informed by the Historical Committee of the Church that he had been included, under the fictitious name of Zefir (Zephyr), in 1975, in the registers of the collaborators of the communist regime, from which he was struck off in 1978. “I have always taught – publicly stated mgr. Michalik – that we must remain within the truth. I have never shied away from the truth, and this is precisely why today I openly state it. We must look for the truth even when it means having to endure slander”. Then, the archbishop added: “For me this is a time of ordeal. I have always thought I had been vigilant as to the subterfuges adopted by the communist officers”. Mgr. Michalik said he was accosted for the first time by the secret service officers in 1961, when he was still a seminarian. Of this attempted threat he had immediately informed the parish priest and the rector of the seminary. Mgr. Michalik stated he has never been informed of his being registered as a collaborator. As he has never been informed when he was struck off the register, (in 1978) when he left for Rome. As possible circumstances of his registration (1975), mgr. Michalik listed the internal secret service system, in force since 1973, which set forth that people could be registered in the collaborators’ lists unknown to them. The archbishop mentioned that he refused to have any contact with the secret service officers when he received his passport for going to Rome in 1978, and he stated that he was not openly urged to collaborate by those officers on any other occasion. The Historical Committee determined that mgr. Michalik was registered as a collaborator of the communist security service, but in the (partial) documentation kept at the National Memory Institute there are no traces whatsoever of any factual action on his part. There are no documents to substantiate contacts either. Mgr. Michalik’s papers are incomplete since a large part of the communist secret service’s documents were destroyed after the fall of the regime in 1989.