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The Pope and the secret world of intelligence By Gordon Thomas Thursday, January 11, 2007 Pope John Paul II was regularly briefed by the CIA. The revelation will further fuel the controversy about the resignation of Mgr Stanislaw Wielgus, the Archbishop of Warsaw. His decision to quit, only minutes before he was due to celebrate his inaugural mass, came after he confessed to being an informant for Poland's communist-era secret police and intelligence service...snip...But shortly after he was elected the 261 pope in 1978, John Paul had received a letter from President Jimmy Carter. It was hand-carried to the Vatican...

Polish leader: Scandal weighs on church RYAN LUCAS Associated Press WARSAW, Poland - Poland faces "a national crisis" from the resignation by Warsaw's new archbishop after admitting he cooperated with the Communist-era secret police, the prime minister said Tuesday. Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus stunned the faithful Sunday by stepping down minutes before his official installation Mass, a move that has rattled heavily Roman Catholic Poland. Another prominent clergyman, the rector of Krakow's Wawel Cathedral, also left his post for similar reasons Monday amid warnings there may be more revelations coming. The church is bracing for the publication of a book by...

Lessons from an Archbishop’s Fall To take control of its own history, the Catholic Church in Poland needs to vet miles of communist-era police records. By George Weigel Newsweek Updated: 5:49 p.m. ET Jan. 8, 2007 Jan. 8, 2007 - The dramatic resignation this past Sunday of the newly installed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus, who admitted to having agreed to collaborate with the Polish secret police after initially denying any such involvement, has brought into the full glare of international attention a debate that has roiled the Catholic Church in Poland for two years: how should the church respond...

Following the resignation of archbishop Wielgus and the scandal over his lying about his communist past, the Church, as well as other areas of Polish public life, are in need of finally cutting harmful ties with the country's communist past, say commentators. The scandal over archbishop Wielgus that made headlines the world over seems to result in the acceleration of the process of clearing the Catholic Church in Poland of dangerous ties with the country's communist past. A well-known head of the Wawel Cathedral in Kraków, fr. Janusz Bielański, resigned from his post, following a publication in one of the...

Vatican 'didn't know bishop spied' POSTED: 8:38 a.m. EST, January 8, 2007 VATICAN CITY (Reuters) -- The Vatican did not know the former Warsaw archbishop had spied for Poland's former communist regime when Pope Benedict XVI nominated him last month, a senior cardinal was quoted as saying on Monday. Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus resigned on Sunday after admitting to collaborating with Poland's communist secret police -- conduct that the Vatican's top spokesman acknowledged on Sunday had "gravely compromised his authority". Benedict had defended Wielgus in the face of a rising tide of allegations, and the Vatican sent out a statement last...

Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, now proven to have collaborated with Poland's communist regime, has officially stepped down. The Pope accepted his resignation. The news came unexpectedly in the morning, in the midst of preparations for the archbishop's inauguration ceremony. The decision was reportedly a result of negotiations at the Vatican level. According to some sources, it was Pope Benedict personally, who suggested that archbishop Wielgus step down after finding out that he did not reveal the whole truth in his recent statements to the Vatican about his past collaboration with Poland's communist regime. Instead of the inauguration ceremony, which was scheduled...

Polish archbishop quits amid row The controversial Archbishop of Warsaw has resigned, less than an hour before he was due to be installed in his post. Stanislaw Wielgus has been at the centre of a communist-era spying row, and recently admitted collaborating with the secret police. He announced the decision in person at a special Mass for his installation, to a mixture of applause and shouting. The Vatican's mission in Poland said in a statement that Pope Benedict XVI had accepted the archbishop's resignation. The Pope has asked Cardinal Jozef Glemp, Archbishop Wielgus' predecessor, to return to his post temporarily...

arsaw's New Archbishop Resigns Amid Communist-Era Spying Scandal By VOA News 07 January 2007 Pope Benedict has accepted the resignation of new Archbishop of Warsaw Cardinal Stanislaw Wielgus, who gave up the post only three days after admitting he cooperated with Poland's communist-era secret police. Roman Catholic Church officials in Poland made the announcement Sunday less than an hour before Cardinal Wielgus was to be ceremonially installed as archbishop of Warsaw. After he was officially consecrated in the office of archbishop Friday, Cardinal Wielgus issued a statement admitting he was a communist-era spy. He had previously denied it. He has...

The newly-appointed archbishop of Warsaw resigned today after admitting he had spied for Poland's communist-era secret services, the Vatican's mission in Poland said. The mission said in a statement Pope Benedict had accepted Bishop Stanislaw Wielgus's resignation

Even after archbishop Wielgus's apology for his communist collaboration, pressures on him to step down from the post of archbishop metropolitan of Warsaw do not weaken.A small group of Poles rallied peacefully yesterday night before the Warsaw residence of Archbishop Wielgus, who has now been proven to have been a spy for the communist era secret services. The protesters gathered under a banner saying "non possumus", meaning "we cannot allow that" to pray for the bishop to change his mind and resign. They said they were disappointed not so much by the archbishop's past, for which he eventually apologized, but...

Warsaw's new archbishop, Stanislaw W. Wielgus, caught in Eastern Europe's widening witch hunt for former Communist secret police informers, admitted Friday that he had collaborated with the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or Security Service, known as the S.B. "Before you today, I confess to the mistake committed by me years ago, just as I have confessed to the Holy Father," Bishop Wielgus said in an open letter to Polish Catholics. "By the fact of this entanglement, I have damaged the church." He said he compounded that damage by denying "facts of this cooperation" in recent days. Bishop Wielgus insisted, however, that he...

Spy Charges Against New Archbishop Shake Poland 07:07 PM, January 4th 2007 by News Staff Bells will toll Sunday when Stanislaw Wielgus is inducted as Warsaw's new archbishop, succeeding Cardinal Jozef Glemp. But din of another kind is dominating now, and Catholic journalist Kazimierz Sowa is not alone in seeing "black clouds" hanging over Wielgus' accession to one of the most important posts in Poland's Catholic Church. Archbishop Wielgus, 67 years old and formerly the bishop of Plock, is alleged to have spied for years on his fellow priests. Historian and civil rights' ombudsman Andrzej Paczkowski, who set up a...

According to the weekly Gazeta Polska, Archbishop Stanisław Wielgus, who is to succeed Cardinal Józef Glemp as the metropolitan of Warsaw, has in the past been a secret collaborator of the communist intelligence. Investigative journalists from the Gazeta Polska weekly have found documents from the communist archives, according to which the newly appointed archbishop metropolitan of Warsaw, Stanisław Wielgus, collaborated with the communist secret services for over 20 years, informing them about the activities of the Catholic Church in Communist Poland. Tomasz Sakiewicz, editor in chief of Gazeta Polska: 'Our authors have found materials from the archives of Communist secret...