Warsaw’s new archbishop resigned Sunday amid a scandal over his involvement with the communist-era secret police that has shaken the deeply Roman Catholic homeland of the late Pope John Paul II.
Stanislaw Wielgus announced his decision at the capital’s St. John’s Cathedral, which was packed with worshippers gathered for a Mass that was to have marked his formal installation. The congregation included President Lech Kaczynski.
A forlorn-looking Wielgus read from a letter to Pope Benedict XVI in which he offered his resignation "after reflecting deeply and assessing my personal situation."
Though Kaczynski and some others applauded, many in the church and a large crowd packed outside in the rain shouted, "We welcome you," "Stay with us," and "No, No!"
Dressed in a resplendent golden miter and robes, Wielgus, 67, made his brief announcement less than an hour after Poland’s church said in a statement that he had resigned.
Vatican announcements – in Italian and Polish.
Benedict will want to proceed cautiously to make sure his next pick doesn’t have a similar set of skeletons in his closet, and that may be a complicated process, according to Tomasz Pompowski, an editor with DZIENNIK, an influential Polish newspaper, who has followed the Wielgus case closely.
Pompowski told NCR that he’s aware of 20 cases involving alleged collaboration by current bishops, who were recruited earlier in their clerical careers and groomed as they moved up the system. Pompowski said the degree of collaboration varies from case to case, but some involve allegations at least as serious as those surrounding Wielgus.
The Polish church has long been aware that it’s sitting on a “time bomb” with regard to Communist-era collaborators, Pompowski said, but it avoided confronting these issues during the last years of Pope John Paul II’s papacy for fear of burdening the beloved Polish pope in his twilight.
Wielgus has insisted that he never caused anyone harm, and that he went along with the security forces largely so that he could pursue his academic career, believing that his capacity to travel internationally was important for the church during an age of enforced isolation from the outside world.
Neverthless, Wielgus has acknowledged that “the fact of my involvement has harmed the Church.”
Polish sources say the policy under both the late Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski of Warsaw and Cardinal Karol Wojtyla of Cracow, later Pope John Paul II, was that any contact with the security forces should be avoided if at all possible, and immediately reported in writing to ecclesiastical superiors. Wojtyla, for example, insisted on having witnesses present for such meetings, even for the most delicate discussions.
In that sense, observers say, Wielgus went well beyond what was considered normal practice for clergy of the day.
It was not immediately clear what Wielgus’ future may hold, but Polish sources expect something similar to what happened in the case of Archbishop Julian Paetz, who resigned as the Archbishop of Poznan in March 2002 amid a sexual abuse scandal. Paetz today lives in an archdiocesan-owned apartment in Poznan and keeps a generally low profile.
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