POLAND: Poles yesterday morning snapped up copies of a long-awaited book by a Krakow priest revealing the names of at least seven priests and three bishops who spied on him for com-munist-era secret services.
Fr Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski wrote his book, Priests and the Secret Service, in defiance of his superiors. The volume is likely to increase pressure on the Polish Catholic church to explain the actions of its clergy during the communist era.
The book, with an initial print-run of 150,000 copies, is a further dent in the traditional image of the church as a stoic pillar of communist resistance, just weeks after Stanislaw Wielgus admitted secret police collaboration and resigned at the Mass to install him as archbishop of Warsaw.
Fr Zaleski's book draws on his 500-page secret police (SB) file containing snapshots, reports by informers and a videotape of him being tortured by SB agents in 1985. When his file emerged 18 months ago, he wrote to his superiors about its contents but says he received no reply. Only when he announced last year he would tell all in a book did church authorities react, calling him "a merciless and ruthless accuser".
But Fr Zaleski points out most of the book deals with clergymen who refused SB advances to spy on him - more than 85 per cent, matching national estimates - while only the last chapter names collaborators.
The most prominent name is Archbishop Juliusz Paetz who informed from March 1978 under the name "Fero", during his time in the Vatican. He later returned to Poland but resigned as archbishop of Poznan in 2002 after he was accused of sexually abusing young clerics.
"For how much longer will concern for the wellbeing of bishops be put before the reliability of the church?" asked the conservative Rzeczpospolita newspaper.
Others said the book would not have a significant effect on the Polish church.
"It will surely leave a mark but the impact of this book was weakened by the scandal with Bishop Wielgus," said sociologist Ireneusz Krzeminski of Warsaw University.