Warsaw, Poland, Jan 12, 2007 / 10:50 am
The executive committee of the Polish Bishops’ Conference will meet this Friday in a special session to discuss “the state of the Church in Poland following the events of recent days,” after Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus of Warsaw resigned amidst reports he collaborated with the Communist regime’s secret police decades ago.
A press release by the Polish bishops quoted conference president Archbishop Jozef Michalik as saying, “If we look at what has happened, we should humbly thank the Lord because the truth has won out in the end. We should thank God for Archbishop Wielgus’s decision to offer his resignation and also Pope Benedict XVI for accepting the resignation immediately, thus solving the problem.”
Archbishop Michalik underscored that “for the Christian, priest or bishop, there is only one set of ethics. Lying is always wrong. Collaborating with dishonest men for dishonest causes is also wrong,” he said.
The Apostolic Nuncio to Poland, Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk, said, “The media should act responsibly in the way in which it makes known the contents of documents from the Communist regime, in order to avoid causing greater harm.”