I don’t know if it’s necessary to recall what happened, but out of journalistic duty I’ll mention it: in the flat of a local priest, by the way, an editor of the Sosnowiec edition of the weekly “Niedziela” [“Sunday”] there was a drunken men’s party, which the media were quick to describe as an “orgy”. Most probably because sexual stimulants were being consumed and, for greater “enjoyment, a male prostitute was called in to provide further attractions for the participants. It is not entirely clear who and what overdosed but an ambulance had to be called because one of the revellers lost his conscience. The paramedics weren’t allowed in, so they called the police, worried neighbours gathered in the street and that’s when it all happened… Nobody died, but the emergency services said their life-saving work was obstructed – if it hadn’t been for that, there would have been no grounds for any legal action. For adult men are free to spend their time as they please and with whom they please…

The scandal has become monstrous – I should write it like that, but I’m not at all sure that it has. “Rev. Tomasz Z., whose involvement in what happened in Dąbrowa Górnicza on the night of 30 to 31 August is beyond doubt, was stripped of all his ecclesiastical offices and functions on September 21 of this year, pending the clarification of the matter, and was ordered to live outside his parish”, reads a communiqué from the Press Office of the Sosnowiec Diocese dated September 22. Not earlier, I must confess. Why so late?

The local bishop, Grzegorz Kaszak, issued a statement in which – in the last paragraph – he apologised “to all those who have been affected and greatly saddened or even disgusted by the situation taking place in Dąbrowa Górnicza”. However, the first paragraph reads: “I urge you to pray and support, as much as you can, the priests who are hurt and ashamed as well as all those who haven’t done anything wrong but are suffering greatly, having a really hard time”.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE An eminent authority in the field of priestly formation, Fr Józef Augustyn, a Jesuit, was quick to react, saying in an interview for the Catholic Press Agency: “The letters from superiors published almost immediately after the media announced another scandal in the Church, are undoubtedly important, but they are not enough”. He added: “It is necessary to stand face to face with the living community of the faithful, to express with all humility our sorrow and compassion; to apologise if it’s appropriate at the time; to inspire prayer for those involved in the scandal, for the parish and diocesan community, to comfort and encourage the faithful”. Father Augustyn did not hide the fact that in this last matter he lacked the voice of other bishops, perhaps from episcopal circles.

Well, it seems that this is not the first time that the principle “I will not interfere in the jurisdiction of another diocese” has been applied here, but it is sometimes used to the detriment of the faithful and the Church. The problem is not new, because, as I have already w mentioned no one will ever think about the faithful who experience terrible scandal, cannot cope with growing frustration and even leave the Church. They are terrified and full of pain. Why doesn’t anyone think about them?

Yes, Pope Francis thinks about the faithful, so did his predecessors: Benedict XVI and John Paul II. But none of them has been able to take on the homosexual lobby, with its huge, worldwide structure of dioceses and their offices, full of complacent officials, some of whom cannot keep up with reading the Vatican’s instructions and recommendations, others of whom have no intention of implementing them, yet others even sabotage and negate them.

“Homosexual were established in various seminaries, which operated more or less openly and which, of course, changed the climate there”. This is a passage from one of the articles, published by “Tygodnik TVP”. It comes from Pope Benedict XVI’s reflections on this subject “The Church and the scandal of sexual abuse”, published in the German magazine “Klerusblatt” in 2019, and now published in the posthumous volume “What is Christianity? The Last Writings Spiritual” (Polish edition Esprit, 2023).

In this text, Benedict XVI “with a sharp theological approach to reality and with his priestly sensitivity developed in a convulsive period of recent German history, [stated] that clerical paedophilia has its roots in the change in the sexual paradigm promoted by the revolutions of 1968 and in the consistent loosening of the Christian concept of morality”.

And this is what Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu Farnós, a Vatican official, writes about Benedict in an extraordinary brochure (about which in a moment), which precisely, document by document and year by year, presents the actions of successive popes in the fight against sexual abuse. Monsignor Farnós does not hide the fact that “the abuse crisis largely led to Benedict XVI’s resignation and the seriousness of the problem could no longer be hidden”. He recalls how attempts were made to contrast the explanations of the retired Pope with the actions of the current one and shows that only the continuity of the view “makes it possible to explain what happened and the seriousness of the current ecclesiastical state of emergency”.

Now it is time to present the brochure prepared for the Polish edition by the Diocesan Press of Warsaw-Praga, translated by Rev. Maciej Miętek. Its full title is “Keys to Pope Francis’ fight against abuse after 10 years of pontificate. I was converted there – during my trip to Chile”.

What is it about? During a trip to Chile in January 2018, the Pope was met with a cold reception, full of silent reluctance and unspoken accusations. It was about his passivity in the face of repeated complaints from the group of victims of Rev. Fernando Karadima, a famous priest. During the return journey, on the plane to Rome, the young American journalist Nicole Winfield said simply: “No, Father, it’s not like that”. And she forced the Pope to make a reflection, which – in an interview after Benedict XVI's death – he called nothing less than “a conversion”. In this extraordinary pamphlet, the author writes how “with great freedom of spirit [the Pope] allowed himself to face what he saw in Chile, i.e. the corruption of some bishops who concealed – even in good faith, thinking that it was a way to protect the Church – the abuse on the part of some clergy”.

And then the Pope sent his delegation to Chile: Archbishop Charles Scicluna and the author of this pamphlet, Scicluna’s closest collaborator.

To familiarize the Reader with Scicluna, may I remind you that he came to Poland three years ago to investigate the media accusations against Card. Stanisław Dziwisz, charged with negligence in prosecuting abuses. Charles Scicluna (born 1959), a priest from Malta, a pupil of the conservative and distinguished Cardinal Raymond Burke, was appointed by JP2 as promoter of justice in the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 2002. This is the most important and serious Vatican congregation – and it is the one that deals with clergy sexual abuse, because it is a crime against the faith. Which, by the way, is worth remembering. It was Archbishop Scicluna who finalized the indictment against Marcial Degollado, the founder of the Legion of Christ, a repeated sex offender, or rather a degenerate.

After Scicluna’s visit to Chile, the Pope summoned all Chilean bishops to the Vatican and accepted their resignations. Scicluna then prepared a meeting of all presidents of episcopates, which the pope convened in February 2019, to work for a Church that would be “more transparent, accountable and always ready to account”. Its first result was the widely known papal document VELM(vos esitis lux mundi) issued in May 2019, introducing new radical legal provisions enabling the prosecution of sexual crimes.

The author of the brochure and Scicluna’s deputy is a Spaniard (born in 1968), graduate of law and theology and a doctor of canon law at the most important Vatican Gregorian University. In May this year, The LA News called him “some kind of superagent” and one of the key people in Pope Francis’ entourage.

In the brochure, he presents the subsequent stages of specifying and tightening the legal system, enabling the prosecution of abuses – he also does not hide the fact that it took many years for the Church to move away from – however it is understood – post-conciliar “anti-juridism” and “ultimately learned that it is impossible to maintain discipline church without the use of penal coercion”, because “protecting God’s people is the basic task of every bishop or superior”.

Monsignor Farnós shows “Francis’ unequivocal will to resolve the drama of clerical sexual abuse of minors once and for all”. But although ten years of this pontificate have already passed, and actions have been taken before that, the process – the author believes – has only just begun.

At the end of his extremely interesting work, he presents in bullet points what urgently needs to be done. And here – to put it bluntly – there is a cry, if not an alarm: “it will be necessary to review recruitment, vocational discernment and affective formation in seminaries and novitiates, especially in the face of internal phenomena such as the crowding out of good candidates by homosexual subcultures”.

The example of Dąbrowa Górnicza has been highly publicised, but isn’t the above sentence more shocking: “pushing out good candidates by homosexual subcultures”? And the example of a village not far from Warsaw, where the inhabitants could not ask the bishop to take away from them a homosexual priest who “flaunted” his boy? Similarly to the example of a titled priest from a big city who took a boy to the vicarage and kept him there in front of the faithful. Not to mention a priest from media circles who even went on a journalistic trip abroad – a group trip – along with his partner.

Father Józef Augustyn SJ, whom I quoted extensively at the beginning, already in 2002 warned and appealed in the book “Deeply Shocked. Self-Purification of the Church”. However, it seems that the situation is much more difficult now. Now Fr Augustyn says directly that “active, camouflaged homosexuals in the priestly or religious community are a real disaster. They often wreak havoc that cannot be described”, and that is why the “Instruction” issued during the pontificate of Pope Benedict XVI clearly states that there should be no place for active homosexuals in priestly communities. However, this place still exists – as article 2 of this brochure indicates.

Even individual people in a diocese or in a religious order, if they lead a double life, are a real disaster, not so much in terms of image, but morally – the Jesuit concludes or perhaps warns – faithful are unable to digest information about the scandals involving homosexual priests. Therefore, scandalised, they leave the Church.

– Barbara Sułek-Kowalska

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

– Translated by Dominik Szczęsny-Kostanecki