{"id":3670,"date":"2007-01-04T08:59:37","date_gmt":"2007-01-04T08:59:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/in-poland.html"},"modified":"2007-01-04T08:59:37","modified_gmt":"2007-01-04T08:59:37","slug":"in-poland","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/in-poland.html","title":{"rendered":"In Poland"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past few weeks, controversy has grown over the archbishop-elect of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus (due to be installed on Sunday). John Allen summarizes:<\/a><\/p>\n

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Controversy surrounding the alleged collaboration of the archbishop-elect of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, with Poland\u2019s Communist-era security forces deepened on Tuesday, with the publication of documents purporting to show that as early as 1973 Wielgus vowed to report on the activities of Polish priests abroad in exchange for permission to travel and other privileges.<\/p>\n

Wielgus and other church officials, however, continue to insist that his contacts with the Communists amounted to little more than a bureaucratic formality, and that the then-professor of medieval philosophy never informed on anyone.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt a very general level, such contacts had to be maintained. For example, if I wanted the authorities to allow me to go on a trip abroad, I could not possibly tell the agent who was harassing me to get lost,\u201d Wielgus told the Polish press. <\/p>\n

During the Communist era, any Pole wishing to travel abroad was required to meet with government officials beforehand and to surrender his or her identity card in exchange for a passport, which was valid only for that trip.<\/p>\n

Wielgus said the only thing he was ever asked to do was to specify his agenda during foreign academic meetings, and to promise not to take part in anti-Communist activity. <\/p>\n

That version of Wielgus\u2019 past has been contradicted by some media reports.<\/p>\n

Polish journalists asserted yesterday that documents obtained from Poland\u2019s Institute of National Memory show Wielgus operated under the codename \u201cGrey,\u201d that he underwent special training for secret service agents, and even that at one point he attempted to infiltrate Radio Free Europe.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was one of the most important collaborators of the communist intelligence in the Church,\u201d said Tomasz Sakiewicz, editor of the Gazeta Polska<\/em> newspaper, on Polish radio.<\/p>\n

Two separate commissions are now examining the files pertaining to Wielgus, one organized by Polish civic groups and another under the aegis of the Polish bishops\u2019 conference. Wielgus himself asked the latter to look into the documents.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n

An article from the Radio Polonia website from last month – the <\/a>Gazeta Polska <\/em>publication which is levelling the charges is a right-wing publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past few weeks, controversy has grown over the archbishop-elect of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus (due to be installed on Sunday). John Allen summarizes: Controversy surrounding the alleged collaboration of the archbishop-elect of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, with Poland\u2019s Communist-era security forces deepened on Tuesday, with the publication of documents purporting to show that as early…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIn Poland - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/in-poland.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"In Poland - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Over the past few weeks, controversy has grown over the archbishop-elect of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus (due to be installed on Sunday). John Allen summarizes: Controversy surrounding the alleged collaboration of the archbishop-elect of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, with Poland\u2019s Communist-era security forces deepened on Tuesday, with the publication of documents purporting to show that as early…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/in-poland.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-01-04T08:59:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"In Poland - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/01\/in-poland.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"In Poland - Via Media","og_description":"Over the past few weeks, controversy has grown over the archbishop-elect of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus (due to be installed on Sunday). 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3670\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}