Pope John Paul II knew of cases of child sexual abuse by priests under his command and attempted to cover them up while he was archbishop in his native Poland. This was claimed in a report by a local news channel, cited by the Associated Press.
The material, which was broadcast last night by the Polish channel Te Fau En 24, names three priests who in the 1970s the future pope, known at the time as Archbishop Karol Wojtyła, transferred to other dioceses – one of them in Austria – after being accused of sexually abusing minors. The journalistic investigation revealed that two of the priests subsequently served prison terms for the assaults.
Wojtyła was Archbishop of Krakow from 1964 until 1978, when he was elected Pope John Paul II. He died in 2005, and in 2014 he was declared a saint by an accelerated procedure.
Te Faw En 24 cited documents from the secret services of communist Poland, which tried to discredit the Catholic Church and had its own informants in its ranks. Journalist Marcin Gutowski, who authored the investigation, also spoke to a number of victims and to a man who said that in the 1970s he informed Wojtyła about the abuse committed by one of the priests.
The TV channel also quoted a letter that Wojtyła wrote to the archbishop of Vienna, in which he recommended that he take priest Bolesław Sadusz into his diocese. In it, Wojtyła did not mention that Sadusz was accused of sexually abusing small boys. Sadusch subsequently became a diocesan priest in Austria.
Te Fau En 24’s investigation concluded that there is no doubt that Wojtyła knew about the abuse of priests in his archdiocese and tried to cover it up.
The TV channel’s report caused strong reactions in Poland. Some observers denounced it as an attempt by left-wing forces to destroy the memory of John Paul II, while others demanded that the Catholic Church reveal the truth.
The election of Wojtyła as pope in 1978 became the catalyst for the people of Catholic Poland to openly oppose and eventually overthrow the communist system, AP notes.
