Polish cardinal says archbishop who resigned should take legal action

Published: 2007-01-10

WARSAW, Poland (CNS) -- Poland's leading cardinal defended the newly resigned archbishop of Warsaw and urged legal action to clear his name, as local newspapers made further claims about clergy collaboration under communist rule. "I don't think this case is over -- he deserves a defamation trial and should demand this. If he doesn't, some other body will," Cardinal Jozef Glemp, retired archbishop of Warsaw, said about Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, who resigned after just two days as Warsaw archbishop. "The real need isn't for change in church structures but for change in structures of our state, which needs to liberate itself from media pressure." The cardinal spoke in a prime-time Polish TV interview Jan. 9, two days after Archbishop Wielgus resigned. Archbishop Wielgus initially denied media charges that for 22 years he had been a "trusted collaborator" of Poland's secret police, the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or SB. Later, he admitted collaborating, but denied hurting anyone or spying and said, "through the fact of this entanglement, I harmed the church."

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