POLAND:The Catholic church in Poland is facing a serious crisis after the incoming Archbishop of Warsaw rejected claims he had spied for the communist-era secret police and asked for his inaugural Mass to go ahead tomorrow morning.
Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus was officially sworn in yesterday afternoon after he admitted contacts with the secret police (SB), which he "deeply regretted". However he denied ever informing on the church and clergy.
"I have never betrayed Christ nor His church, not in deeds, words nor intentions. I have never harmed anyone with my deeds nor words," he said in a statement issued yesterday.
While many welcomed the statement, several senior church figures as well as influential newspapers warned that a precedent had been set.
"If put in such a situation I would have asked the Apostolic See to dismiss me from the office," said Tadeusz Goclowski, archbishop of Gdansk. The conservative Rzeczpospolita daily warned: "If Archbishop Wielgus does not resign ... it will mean that hiding one's past pays off.
"Credibility has always been the power of the Polish church. Today this virtue is put to a serious test."
A representative survey yesterday by the TNS/OBOP group showed that two thirds of Poles think SB collaborators should not be allowed into the higher levels of the church.
The revelations have left Poland's staunchly anti-communist leaders unsure of whether to attend tomorrow's Mass. President Lech Kaczynski has promised to attend but his prime minister brother, Jaroslaw, was still making his mind up last night.
Yesterday a friend said that Archbishop Wielgus was "devastated" by the scandal and had been afraid to resign in case it was perceived as an act of disobedience to the pope.
"He said he was going through Good Friday," said Fr Marian Rusecki.
In his statement, the archbishop said his first SB contact came in 1967 when he applied for a passport to visit East Germany and was confronted with secretly-recorded tapes of sermons he had made criticising the communist regime.
Six years later, before a trip to Munich, he said he was threatened and bullied by a senior intelligence officer into signing a letter agreeing to be an informer, what he called his "moment of weakness".
Despite regular meetings with SB officers he said he never carried out any tasks assigned him nor did he ever speak about church officials or internal church affairs.
"I have never supplied any materials on anyone. I have never eavesdropped on anyone nor recorded anyone," said the archbishop. He expressed "deep regret" for making academic research trips which necessitated SB contacts and for denying his collaboration in recent days.
The custodian of Poland's secret police files estimates that one in 10 Polish priests had contacts with the SB and Archbishop Wielgus is just the latest in a series of prominent clergymen to have been exposed.
Fr Henryk Issakowicz-Zalewski, about to publish a book on the phenomenon, said: "It is possible that the officers misheard some facts but they would not have forged whole documents."
Archbishop Wielgus and other bishops signed a document last year condemning collaboration by Polish priests with the communists. "Conscious and voluntary collaboration with the Church's enemies is a sin," the document says. "Denying the fact of signing the act of loyalty and collaboration is a lie and thus a moral evil."
Opinion is divided about whether the matter is now resolved. Mr Tomasz Krolak of the Catholic Information news service said: "I don't think it will be as huge a scandal like in Ireland or the USA once the church doesn't sweep the matter under the carpet."