John Paul II’s handling of abuse claims was the opposite to what his attackers want us to think

The day after thousands of faithful Catholics gathered around Poland to defend the good name of Saint John Paul II, Polish journalist Tomasz Rowiński explains how those intent on discrediting the former pope manipulate the facts to suit their purposes

The attack on John Paul II carried out in Poland in recent weeks by two liberal media outlets – TVN television and Agora, the publisher of left-leaning national newspaper “Gazeta Wyborcza” – is based primarily on a broad presentation of manipulatively selected historical material, details of which have previously already been honestly reported by journalists researching the history of the Catholic Church during the communist dictatorship. 

As far as the unfolding of the ongoing “scandal” is concerned, two works are crucial here. The first is a book by Ekke Overbeek, a Dutch journalist working in Poland, entitled “Maxima culpa. John Paul II knew”, and the second is a TV report by Marcin Gutowski entitled “Franciszkańska 3”. 

Both authors, according to their declarations, undertook a pioneering analysis of the actions of Bishop Karol Wojtyla in relation to cases of paedophile priests active during his time as Bishop of Krakow. In reality, their accusations are an empty shell consisting of slander and a deliberate omission of available sources and historical analyses. 

The factual deficiencies in their narratives are supported by both authors with categorical statements such as “we know without any doubt”, “it is more than circumstantial evidence”, “Wojtyla knew about the sexual abuse of priests and hid it in Poland before he became Pope”. However, beyond these declarations, there is nothing to indicate that this was the case. Historians of various political profiles have torn both the book and the film to shreds.

It is worth taking a look at how Overbeek and Gutowski manipulate the sources. Gutowski, for example, declares in his film that he used various sources, not only the files of the communist security service, but this is not shown in the film. He also suggests that he is presenting completely new material, when in fact he is selecting already known information in such a way that it fits his thesis. 

The journalists Tomasz Krzyżak and Piotr Litka wrote about paedophile priests from the time when Karol Wojtyła was the Ordinary of the Krakow Archdiocese quite recently, in the autumn of 2022, in the daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita, in extensive texts. These studies were widely acknowledged to be unquestionably reliable. Their conclusions were quite different from the theses of Overbeek and Gutowski – Wojtyla acted correctly and sometimes even above the standard.

Gutowski and Overbeek discuss, for example, the case of Father Józef Loranc and, using understatement, suggest that this paedophile molester of girls was shuffled from parish to parish by Bishop Wojtyła. Thus, that he covered up the crime. However, this is an obvious manipulation, since it is well known how Wojtyla reacted in this case. 

Moreover, it can be shown that the penal ecclesiastical procedures of the time worked quite well in the KraKow metropolis. When, in 1970, information about a priest molesting girls reaches the local parish priest from the village where Loranc ministered, the Church’s reaction was immediate. The parish priest immediately consulted his dean and asked for advice. The dean recommended that the molester be taken to the curia immediately, which is what was done. The very next day Fr Loranc was with Cardinal Wojtyła admitting his guilt.

What decisions did Wojtyła make? In accordance with current Church law, he suspended the parish priest and deprived him of his canonical mission, and therefore also deprived him of the right to conduct catechesis. 

Did he transfer him to another parish? Nothing of the sort. Instead he placed him in one of the men’s convents, which served as places of seclusion in such cases, a kind of ecclesiastical detention centre. It is worth adding, to show how quick the Church’s reaction was, that the actions of Cardinal Wojtyla and his priests pre-empted the action of the state militia, which also received information about Fr Loranc’s criminal behaviour. The arrest had already taken place at the place of church retreat, not at the place of ministry. Fr Józef Loranc was sentenced to prison for paedophilia.

The case of Fr Eugeniusz Surgent, one of the more notorious sexual predators in the Catholic Church in communist Poland, whose complex canonical situation opened the field to easy manipulation by publicists, was different. Fr Surgent was ordained in the Diocese of Lubaczów, the part of the Archdiocese of Lwów that remained within the borders of post-war Poland, but ministered in the Archdiocese of Kraków. When his paedophilic acts came to light, he was expelled by Wojtyła from the Krakow diocese to his home diocese, where a canonical trial could take place. However, the publicists who attack Cardinal Karol Wojtyła prefer to pretend that they do not distinguish between transfers between parishes to cover up criminal acts and the use of preventive or disciplinary measures proper to ecclesiastical law. Fr Eugeniusz Surgent was also sentenced to prison in a criminal trial.

An interesting case is the story of Father Boleslaw Saduś, about which not much is known except what can be found in the archives of the security police (SB). Father Saduś was not convicted in a criminal trial for sexual violence against minors. As convincingly described by the aforementioned Rzeczpospolita journalists Tomasz Krzyżak and Piotr Litka, the only thing that is certain is his homosexuality. 

The cases of priests Loranc and Surgent show that the communist authorities did not indulge priest-paedophiles so easily. Perhaps in the case of Fr Saduś, it was decided to waive his arrest in exchange for further cooperation with the security services? However, this is only conjecture, as there is no evidence that Fr Saduś was a paedophile. In his characterisation of his collaborator it was noted that “an additional circumstance binding him to the security police were moral scandals connected with his pastoral activity and the help given to him from our side [i.e. the security service – note, author]”. However, what is at issue here is the cover-up of an attempt to seduce full-grown young men during a holiday in 1965. Nor is there any evidence that Cardinal Wojtyła knew anything about Fr Sadus’ immoral behaviour. Krzyżak and Litka convincingly show that knowledge of the problems of the priests of the Krakow diocese reached Wojtyła selectively, as his close associates took care of.

Eventually, Fr Saduś left the Krakow diocese with Cardinal Wojtyła’s consent and moved to Austria. Gutowski suggests that Cardinal Wojtyła misled Cardinal Franz Koenig by not informing him in an official letter of the “real” reasons for his request to receive a priest from Poland. However, the journalist does not want to mention that the official correspondence between the bishops was read by the communist services and communicated possibly sparingly. Nor does he want to mention that Wojtyła and Koenig had a close relationship and did not need official correspondence to pass information to each other. There are examples where this was a normal practice of resistance by the bishops in the face of communist surveillance.

Gutowski also overlooks the fact that Fr Saduś applied for the opportunity to leave Poland at least a few months before any signs of his homosexual excesses could have reached the ears of Cardinal Wojtyła. Paedophilia was probably not mentioned at all and, as of today, there is no evidence that Fr Saduś was interested in underage boys. Gutowski also refuses to mention that during the subsequent years of Fr Saduś’s ministry in Austria, no accusations were made against him, despite the fact that the Church in that country was very much marked by sex scandals. Even if someone wanted to suspend judgment in this case, e.g. until the files of the Krakow curia had been examined and it had been determined what Cardinal Wojtyła really knew about Fr Saduś’s situation, it is the duty of a history researcher, including a journalist, to present all available data, including doubts, and to avoid over-interpretation for the sake of a thesis. Gutowski makes all these mistakes, both in his selection of material and in his unauthorised conjecture to fill in the gaps in historical sources.

Finally, it is necessary to refer to Ekke Overbeek’s slanders against Cardinal Adam Sapieha, the eminent Archbishop of Krakow in the first half of the 20th century. In this case, we are dealing with a pyramidal manipulation, which is also intended to cast a shadow on Wojtyła. Overbeek, on the basis of a single document from the archives of the security service, signed by a communist priest, an alcoholic, a seducer of women, additionally having a personal motive of revenge against Sapieha, accused Sapieha of sexually assaulting clerics and priests. No critical work was done here by Overbeek. He did not mention that Fr Anatol Boczek – for he is referred to here – was deregistered by the security services from the list of informers as someone unreliable and useless. On this basis, Overbeek constructs the insinuation that since Sapieha – already standing over his grave and ailing, over eighty years old – harassed Boczek, this means that he harassed other priests, and therefore also harassed Wojtyla, who – for this reason – would be lenient to paedophilia. And we know, after all, that he was not at all. Such a complex causal sequence presented by Overbeek is pure invention.

During the “debate” on John Paul II’s alleged guilt, yet another testimony appeared – extracted from the secret police files – signed by Father Andrzej Mistat, also with accusatory content against Sapieha. Father Mistat was the Cardinal’s assistant and often acted as a courier carrying undeclared correspondence between Poland and Polish politicians in exile. He was arrested in this connection, was tortured and, as a result of this torture, a confession was made to prove Cardinal Sapieha’s sexual predation. However, since we are dealing with a confession created under torture, it has no independent credibility. It must be added that the files of the communist secret police in Poland have been studied for years, countless historical studies have been written using this historical base, the moral cases of priests are quite well known to historians and the accusations against Sapieha have not been confirmed by known queries. 

After all, one has to know how to use the files of the security services. Do we consider as reliable and not requiring multilateral verification the confessions extracted from people under torture by the Gestapo or the NKVD? The works of Overbeek and Gutowski must be treated – irrespective of their intentions – as yet another political attack on Christian civilisation in Poland. The hierarchs of the Church in Poland today, too conservative, reluctant to investigate the past, are not blameless in this situation, but they are only indirectly responsible for certain negligence. The manipulative attack on John Paul II shows something else – we are entering a new phase of aggressive undermining of Karol Wojtyła’s credibility in Poland, and its main goal is to uproot the institutions of the “civilisation of life” that have been built up on the Vistula River. Also thanks to the commitment of John Paul II.

(Close to 60,000 supporters of St John Paul II gathered in Warsaw on April 3 | Photograph of Marszałkowska Street, Warsaw courtesy of Centrum Życia i Rodziny)

More on this: https://catholicherald.co.uk/the-problem-with-the-new-allegations-against-st-john-paul-ii/

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