Rising tensions and questions over Archbishop Weilgus of Warsaw, mounting over the course of the past week. I am at a loss to understand why he has not withdrawn, except for the possibility that he truly believes he did nothing so wrong as to discredit his role as Archbishop.   A Times (UK) article provides a summary, and I hope we will have more commentary tomorrow:

Wielgus, 67, has confessed to spying for the Polish security service, Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, during the cold war until the communist regime collapsed in 1989. He met police agents more than 50 times in one five-year period during the 1970s.

La Repubblica, the leading Rome newspaper, said: “Atrocious suspicions are emerging: who was spied on by the police thanks to Wielgus? Perhaps even Karol Wojtyla, at first the brave young cardinal of Krakow and moral leader of dissent, later the Pope who challenged Moscow and knocked down the (Berlin) Wall?” Father Adam Boniecki, former editor of the Polish edition of Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, said that Wielgus “would do best to resign immediately”.

Boniecki, who was close to John Paul, said: “To be Archbishop of Warsaw with this beginning is a horrible thing.”

Wielgus attempted a campaign of damage limitation with an open letter read out in churches in Warsaw yesterday. He wrote that he had confessed his failings to John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI.

Wielgus said he had told Benedict about his past when the pontiff put his name forward for the post. “Today before you I confess this mistake I made years ago, as I have already confessed it to the Holy Father,” he wrote.

“I did not find at the time the wisdom, the determination and the courage to interrupt those contacts.” He added that he had first been contacted while a philosophy student in 1967 and had been threatened. He signed a collaboration agreement in 1978.

Wielgus, a former professor of medieval history and rector of the Catholic University of Lublin, insisted: “Today I can state with full conviction that I never denounced anyone and that I always tried not to harm anyone. But, simply by making myself an accomplice in this way, I caused harm to the church.”

Like many academics during the communist era he was allowed to travel abroad and was interviewed by the secret services before and after his journeys. His inside knowledge of church matters would have made him an exceptionally valuable source.

The Polish episcopate has confirmed Wielgus’s “knowing and concrete collaboration with the secret police”, but has intervened to stop more revelations.

I saw mentioned somewhere the concern that Archbishop Wielgus would become Primate of Poland after Cardinal Glemp’s 80th birthday in a couple of years. But according to this, that will not happen – the role reverts to another see.    But even apart from that, it is still disturbing and, again, difficult to see what purpose his serving in this office would hold, with such a problematic background.