The number of Polish priests collaborating "with the Communist security services" were "comparatively few" and were "fairly irrelevant": this is written in the final release published yesterday, 11th October, by the History Committee, formed one year ago by the Polish Bishops Conference to review the documents of the Communist security services about the members of the episcopacy, which are now in the National Memory Institute (Ipn). In fact, explains the release, "The Committee, as it does not actually act as a court, has not expressed any opinion about the cases of the clergy deliberately and secretly collaborating with the security bodies of Communist Poland". In addition, the Committee had trouble reviewing the documents from the archives of the Ipn because they are incomplete, especially because the archives of the security services were largely destroyed in 1989-1990. "An additional difficulty for reviewing the documents for reliability reads the release is the fact the security services usually did not ask the priests to give any written agreement or sign any document at all". (continued)
