Polish prelate: Find communist-era collaborators as well as informers

Published: 2005-06-03

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- The president of the Polish bishops' conference said finding out who communist-era priests collaborated with and who forced the priests to act as informants was just as important as finding out which priests collaborated. "We're not afraid of the truth about ourselves and our sinfulness," said Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl. "But we also need to reveal the people with whom priests collaborated and who forced them into it. This is demanded by the principles of social justice." The archbishop said May 26 that Poland's crime-investigating National Remembrance Institute had acted unjustly in naming Dominican Father Konrad Hejmo as an informant without allowing the Rome-based priest to examine the material against him. He said that investigating clergy was not a "task for the church," and said that the "sins of priests" were "no different than the sins of lay people."

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