The abrupt resignation of Warsaw's new archbishop over his ties to the communist-era secret police has left Poland facing a "national crisis," the prime minister said on Monday, as the Polish Church struggles with the long-suppressed issue of priests compromised under communism.
Speaking on state Radio 1, Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski praised Pope Benedict XVI for accepting Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus' resignation, calling it "the right decision."
Wielgus stunned worshippers gathered at St. John's Cathedral on Sunday by stepping down moments before his official installation Mass -- a move that has rattled the nation and Poland's powerful Roman Catholic Church.
Kaczynski, whose conservative Law and Justice party has sought both to purge Poland of the vestiges of communist influence and to strengthen traditional Catholic values, also warned of the scandal's damage to the Church in the deeply Catholic country.
He called the Church a "national institution" in Poland.
"That's why this crisis is a national crisis, a very difficult crisis," he said.
While the government has passed new laws widening the number of public officials that must be screened for possible ties to the communist-era intelligence service, many say the Church has fallen behind the rest of society in dealing with penetration of its ranks.
One reason could be that General Czeslaw Kiszczak told Church officials in 1990 that the secret police had destroyed all documents on clergy in their files, Polish media have reported.
It now turns out, however, that microfilm of some of those files survived. It was microfilm copies that confirmed Wielgus' cooperation with the secret police.
Asked on Tuesday about the alleged burning of the files on TVN24 television, Kiszczak declined to comment.
Historians from the state-run Institute of National Remembrance, which holds the secret police archives, estimate that about 15 percent of Polish priests cooperated with the communist-era intelligence services.
Wielgus' case highlights the problem, but may also mark a turning point, says Marek Zajac, a commentator for the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.
"I have the impression that the Wielgus affair was for a lot of Church leaders, not all, but for many of them a mental Rubicon, a mental breakthrough, although a very painful one, that you can't stop" the outing of past agents, said Zajac.
Another prominent clergyman, the rector of Krakow's Wawel Cathedral, also left his post for very similar reasons on Monday amid warnings that more such revelations may be on the way for the Church.
Reverend Janusz Bielanski denied the allegations on Tuesday, saying: "I was never an informer, I never signed any documents, I never received any money."
Kaczynski stressed that the Church played an "unambiguously positive and heroic role" in opposing the communist regime that ruled Poland until 1989, and warned that due to the current crisis the Church is "almost accused of participation in the [communist] system."
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