Polish Catholic Church Faces Demands to Confront Sex Abuse

While many nations in Europe have faced the reality that the sexual abuse of children and youths and hierarchy dictated cover ups were the norm and not the exception, one nation that has not done so as yet is Poland. In some ways Poland parallels what happened in Ireland since the Polish Church like the Irish Church long played a role in maintaining national identity and was a unifying entity in the struggle for freedom from foreign overlords. With that unique position in society, the opportunity for abuse became even more likely and enhanced. Fortunately, it seems the Church's lack of accountability and ability to hide crimes may be coming towards an end. Of course, the Polish populace need to fully open their eyes and one can only hope that government backed investigations such as occurred in Ireland will be the ultimate result. The Catholic Church clearly cannot be trusted to investigate or police itself. Here are highlights from the National Catholic Reporter on events unfolding in Poland:

WARSAW, POLAND -- When Bartek Obloj, a 13-year-old altar boy, hanged himself in his home village of Hludno just before Christmas 2007, he left a letter to his mother complaining of being molested by his parish rector. Police were called and his shocked parents blamed the priest for their son’s death.

A month later, Poland’s Catholic Tygodnik Powszechny weekly reported that Fr. Stanislaw Kaszowski had been moved to a parish 20 miles away after personally saying the boy’s funeral Mass. He’d denied the accusations, the paper added, and defiantly failed to appear at a court hearing.

Hludno’s mayor, Stanislaw Gladysz, testified that locals had long complained of the priest’s “sadistic behavior” and “sexual exploits,” adding that for a decade he’d asked the local ordinary, Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl, to move the priest. However, Michalik, president of the Polish bishops’ conference, had given Kaszowski his full confidence, the mayor said, and refused to discuss the claims.

When Poland’s Catholic Wiez monthly published a special issue on clerical sex abuse this summer, it was the first time a Catholic publication had dared tackle the subject. “The harm caused by sexual molestation of children is unquestionable — but the evil is much greater when pedophilia occurs in the community of faith, and when, in a falsely conceived defense of the church, the authorities hide the facts, conceal the perpetrators and ignore the suffering victims,” the Warsaw-based journal said in its editorial.

Leading Catholics, including the country’s children’s rights spokesman, have been urging the Polish church to adopt procedures for handling abuse claims since 2002, when Archbishop Juliusz Paetz of Poznan resigned after being accused of molesting seminarians. But media inquiries have been stonewalled and whistleblowers warned off. While millions of words have been devoted to denouncing abortion and defending family values, no Polish church leader has ever spoken up at his own initiative on behalf of victims of abuse.

Paetz himself has continued to appear at high-profile church events, while priests and lay Catholics who helped expose his abuses have faced censure. In 2006, he was shown on TV chatting at length with Benedict XVI during the pope’s Polish pilgrimage. In 2009, a handwritten telegram from Benedict, praising the disgraced archbishop’s “fruitful service” to the church, was published at Paetz’s request in Poland’s Catholic Przewodnik Katolicki weekly.

[A]ny criticism of a priest, even by loyal Catholics, is treated as an attack on the church and faith, and the worst church penalty a pedophile priest can expect is to be moved to another parish,” Spiewak told NCR. “If the church doesn’t deal with this problem and stop sheltering its priests from canonical and criminal responsibility, it will sooner or later face the same crisis as the church in other countries. But its leaders have avoided many of the issues faced elsewhere, and seem to think they can do the same with this one.”

Ordinary perpetrators of abuse are treated severely in Poland. . . . When it comes to Catholic priests, however, accusations of inaction and indifference have multiplied.

Fr. Hans Zollner, the Jesuit pro-rector of Rome’s Papal Gregorian University, told the Catholic monthly the situation was comparable to that of Germany before a wave of abuse scandals in 2010. He believes the same crisis will erupt in the Polish church if it fails to “confront the reality” of abuse. . . . . he fears “fortress mentalities” will kick in as complaints and accusations spread, fueling a growing anticlerical backlash.

The tragic case of Bartek Obloj, the altar boy from Hludno, was covered at length by Poland’s official press agency, PAP, and became the subject of a Polish TV documentary. Four years on, however, Obloj’s grieving parents still await answers.

The parish priest, Kaszowski, appeared in court in July 2008, charged with “psychically and physically torturing” the boy. But his trial was delayed pending a psychologist’s report on the 13-year-old prior to his suicide. Although this was filed last February, it wasn’t made public, and while the trial has now started again, it’s being held in camera, without access for the public. The priest, for his part, is refusing to submit a testimony and still working at the nearby parish.

Yes, it is the same pattern that we've seen in country after country where the Catholic Church believes it self to be above that law and show absolutely no regard for the lives and welfare of children and youths. And people ask me why I'm no longer Catholic? Why on earth would I want to be a part of such an evil institution.