A top Polish archbishop has resigned just minutes before his installation mass and two days after formally taking office due to accusations that he acted as an informer for Poland's former communist secret police."The church in Poland needs to look humbly and in truth at its past, present and future," said a statement, signed by the Polish bishops' conference president, Archbishop Jozef Michalik and published in newspapers on 8 January following the resignation of the Archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus.
The Vatican's spokesperson, Federico Lombardi, said, "Despite his humble and moving request for forgiveness, his resignation from the Warsaw See and the Holy Father's quick acceptance of it appears as an appropriate solution to the situation of disorientation that has been created in that nation".
'Trusted collaborator'
Archbishop Wielgus was named in December to succeed Cardinal Jozef Glemp, but was accused by the conservative Gazeta Polska weekly newspaper of having been a "trusted collaborator" for 22 years of Poland's Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or SB.
The allegation was deplored by Wielgus' supporters in Poland and was originally rejected by the Vatican, whose press office said Pope Benedict XVI had shown "full confidence" in the archbishop after taking "account of all his life circumstances, including those connected with his past".
On 4 January, however, Poland's civil rights ombudsman, Janusz Kochanowski, said his own commission had concluded after examining SB documents that there was "no doubt" about the archbishop's "deliberate secret cooperation".
A separate church commission reported in a 5 January statement that it had also seen "numerous important documents," confirming the then priest's "readiness for deliberate, secret collaboration with the security organs of communist Poland".
The Archbishop insisted he had never tried to "inform on or try to harm anyone".
But on 8 January Poland's Rzeczpospolita paper editorialised, "The Polish church cannot cope with the Archbishop Wielgus affair instead of condemning his betrayals, certain bishops, priests and Catholic commentators have vilified those who had the courage to unveil the uncomfortable truth."
Meanwhile, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily said that "many discreet talks" had taken place between the office of President Lech Kaczynski and the Vatican, and that the president himself had spoken directly before the archbishop's resignation with Benedict XVI, who was "extremely angry" about developments in Poland Rome based La Repubblica newspaper said the Pope was "furious". Corriere della Sera asked, "How many of the bishops gathered are above suspicion?" The Tablet reported comments by two mid level Vatican officials who did not wish to be named, but said they were "pretty sure" that Pope Benedict knew of Archbishop Wielgus' past involvement with the secret police. Henri Tincq, religion editor of the Paris-based Le Monde newspaper, wrote: "There is no recent precedent of such a decrease in the authority of a Pope, forced to go back on his decision following a nomination so obviously badly prepared."
There is talk of a coming showdown in the Vatican.
