"No sins either against the Church or against men weigh on my conscience. I can look straight into your eyes". It was said last Sunday by the bishop of Tarnow Wiktor Skworc, as he explained he has always served the Church "with devotion and faithfulness" and that he had learnt just a few months earlier that he might be accused of collaborating with the secret services of Communist Poland. A confidential correspondence, in which the bishop is described with the fictitious name of "Dabrowski" as a collaborator of the totalitarian regime, actually contains information about him. However, the commission of historians who reviewed such correspondence established that the bishop did not provide the intelligence officers any detail that could compromise the then pastor of the diocese of Katowice (where he used to work) or any other bishop. Skworc had been compelled to have contacts with the secret police, as he had been falsely accused of illicit trading of victuals. The affair of the bishop of Tarnow is connected with the infamous checks that are being conducted in Poland to expose the collaborators and victims of the Communist secret services. The problem of some priests’ collaboration with the secret police is now being investigated nationwide and in several dioceses.
