According to journalistic research, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who will become John Paul II, would have suppressed cases of pedophilia within the Polish Church before joining the Vatican.
A journalistic investigation published this Sunday, March 5, by Polish private television TVN assures us: Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, the future John Paul II, was aware of the pedophile acts committed by priests of his diocese, the Kraków Diocese, committed before his appointment as a priest were head of the church, reports 20 Minutes with AFP.
Transfer of pedophile priests
Wojtyla became pope in 1978 and was previously cardinal and bishop of Kraków. When he was made aware of pedophilic acts, he would then have transferred priests from one parish to another to suppress scandals, reports Michal Gutowski, author of the investigation.
According to a registered letter from the future Pope, one of them was even sent to Austria, who at the time did not inform Cardinal Franz König of Vienna about the allegations against this priest.
If the Kraków diocese denied the journalist access to its archives, Gutowski was still able to meet former diocese employees, as well as the victims of pedophile priests and their relatives, to conduct his investigations. He was also able to see documents from the former communist SB secret police.
“John Paul II knew”
An anonymous witness confirmed that he personally disclosed the pedophile actions of a priest to Cardinal Wojtyla in 1973: “Wojtyla first wanted to make sure it wasn’t a bluff. He asked not to report it anywhere, he said he would look into it,” he confirms before assuring that the church man specifically asked him not to go public with the case.
Former American Catholic priest Thomas Doyle, a canon law specialist, testified during the report: “What you have discovered is revolutionary because it shows what many people have suspected for years, that John Paul II knew beforehand that this problem exists, although he does not know it has become Pope. He had to know, but there was no proof. And there we have proof,” notes the author of one of the first accounts of clerical abuse in the United States.
Note that a book entitled Maxima Culpa: John Paul II Knew, the result of an investigation by Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek and with similar allegations against Karol Wojtyla, is due to be published in Poland on Wednesday, March 8th.
The Polish Church has been rocked by numerous cases of pedophilia exposed by the media in recent years. Several high-ranking Polish officials have also been sanctioned by the Vatican.