Lithuanian cardinal says active bishops unlikely to have KGB ties

Published: 2007-01-10

VILNIUS, Lithuania (CNS) -- Lithuanian church leaders said a situation similar to the recent resignation of a Polish archbishop who admitted collaborating with former communist secret police is highly unlikely in Lithuania. "After the restoration of Lithuania's independence in 1990, the ecclesial hierarchy has undergone major reorganizations, so at least on the hierarchical level such problems should not arise," Cardinal Audrys Backis of Vilnius said in a Jan. 8 statement. During the 1990s, all active bishops who were appointed under communism were replaced. Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union from 1940 to 1989. Three of the seven current heads of Lithuanian dioceses -- including Archbishop Sigitas Tamkevicius of Kaunas, the current head of the bishops' conference who was imprisoned in the 1980s -- were members of the anti-Soviet movement. Cardinal Backis issued his statement after the Jan. 7 resignation of Polish Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, who admitted he was an informer for Poland's former communist secret police and that his cooperation harmed the church.

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