SIR EUROPE: POLAND, THE RESULTS OF THE HISTORICAL COMMISSION OF THE BISHOPS ON THE COLLABORATION WITH THE COMMUNIST REGIME (2)

"The preserved material, available to the Commission, relating to the priests who were then ordained bishops, is incomplete and non-systematic. This prevents us from evaluating, in an accurate way, the importance, the intensity and the damage caused by a possible, real and conscious collaboration of these people with the security organs of the People’s Republic of Poland". A further difficulty – added the Commission – is the fact that "usually, religious people were not asked to provide written consent to collaboration, and the SB did not require signed documents from them". The note says that "as for other members of the Polish episcopate, who are still alive, there are no reasons at all to talk about any kind of collaboration". The Commission foresaw to conclude the overall report by 2007. Among other things, such report concerns "the ideological premises of Marxism with respect to religion, and the mechanisms meant to eliminate the Catholic Church from Poland by the communist political power, by demonstrating the role and the behaviours of priests defending national and spiritual values in the years 1945-1989".