Polish bishops ask Rome to investigate former papal secretary

Poland’s Catholic Church has asked the Vatican to investigate allegations that the personal secretary to Pope St John Paul II chose not to act on clerical sexual abuse claims.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz has denied several allegations made in a television documentary, including that he took payments for access to the Polish pope and to suppress investigations into sexual abuse.

Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, head of the Polish episcopate, called on Rome to investigate allegations in the documentary, expressing “hope that any doubts presented in this report will be clarified by the relevant commission of the Holy See”.

The weight of allegations against the 81-year-old Polish cardinal, and his fellow clerics’ call for an investigation rather than a full defence, mark a remarkable fall from grace for the man seen as the keeper of the late pope’s legacy.

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Cardinal Dziwisz, appointed archbishop of Krakow after the pope’s death in 2005 until his retirement in 2016, said he was ready to “co-operate fully” with an investigation.

“This is not about whitewashing or hiding possible negligence, but about honestly presenting the facts,” said the 81 year-old cardinal. “The victims’ welfare is of paramount importance.”

The retired cardinal took a more defensive line ahead of the broadcast, accusing the journalists of trying to smear him with matters on which he had “no responsibility and no knowledge”.

“Every priest has a conscience, and a bishop has a particular sense of responsibility,” he said in an interview broadcast before the documentary aired. “If I had known all these things, I would have reacted.”

Polish clerical sources say any investigation into the former pope’s private secretary would raise to at least 16 the number of clerics undergoing or facing canonical investigations in Rome, mostly over sexual abuse claims or their alleged cover-up.

The claims against the Polish cardinal come as a report this week condemned the Catholic Church in England and Wales for having “prioritised its own reputation over the welfare of vulnerable children for decades”.

A second report into disgraced former cleric Theodore McCarrick found that, despite allegations against him, he was promoted to cardinal by Pope St John Paul II after a personal intervention denying the claims.

In the 82-minute Polish documentary, Don Stanislaw: The other face of Cardinal Dziwisz, shown on private station TVN24, an abuse victim of McCarrick recalls accompanying him to Rome.

He told the filmmakers how the former cardinal took envelopes marked with the numbers 1, 5 and 10 with him – signifying the thousands of dollars inside – into his meetings with Dziwisz, and that the papal secretary was given the largest sum.

The Polish cardinal also denies claims that he knew that Marcial Maciel Degollado, the Mexican-born founder of the Legionaries of Christ organisation and a generous donor to the Holy See before his death in 2008, was a serial abuser of seminarians.

“I have heard that in this matter the blame lies on John Paul II or me,” said Cardinal Dziwisz, “but while I was in the Vatican, I never heard about it.”