Polish cold war spy at Vatican

Vatican orders 'cold war spy' back to Poland

John Hooper in Rome
Thursday April 28, 2005
The Guardian

A Polish monk close to the late Pope John Paul II was ordered back to Poland from the Vatican yesterday to face allegations he spied on the pontiff for his country's communist regime in the closing stages of the cold war.
An official in Warsaw said Father Konrad Hejmo had collaborated with the secret police in the 1980s when the communist government was struggling to cling to power in the face of a swelling opposition inspired by the then recently elected pope.

The priest's job at the Vatican gave him privileged access to some of the Roman Catholic church's most sensitive information at a time when its leader was playing a crucial role in world affairs.

Several of the pope's historic visits to his native country took place during the 1980s. So too did the attempt on John Paul II's life.

Father Hejmo told reporters in Rome he had shared information with an acquaintance, but did not know the man was an agent. The man, a Pole, has since died. "I have never been a secret collaborator," Father Hejmo said. "I can blame myself for being naive. This man came, we helped and on top of it I took his family around Rome ... I partly feel a victim of this situation now."

But Father Hejmo's Dominican superior, Maciej Zieba, told reporters he had seen the files and that they were "convincing and shocking". Andrzej Paczkowski, a historian at the institute which investigates Nazi and communist era crime, said the dossier ran to some 700 pages and also covered "earlier periods."

The head of the institute, Leon Kieres, said an inquiry into persecution by the communists had turned up evidence that showed Father Hejmo was a "secret collaborator of the Polish secret services under the names of Hejnal and Dominik." Hejnal is the name for the traditional bugle call that sounds from a church tower every hour in Krakow's medieval Old Town.

Father Hejmo arrived in Rome in October 1979, a year after Karol Wojtyla was chosen to be the first non-Italian pontiff in more than four centuries. He had been recommended by the late Cardinal Stefan Wyszynski and was put in charge of looking after Polish pilgrims.

He became well known in Poland during the later stage of Pope John Paul's reign as a source of information on the ailing pontiff's health. He was quoted in the Polish and international media in the late pope's final weeks.

News of the allegations being levelled at him broke at a time when Poles were still mourning Pope John Paul, who died on April 2. In Rome, friends and associates of Father Hejmo reacted with incredulity.

Father Jarek Cielecki, editor of the Vatican News Service, said the monk had been recalled to Poland by his superior "to clear up his position."

Father Cielecki told the Italian news agency Adnkronos that, if the information from Poland turned out to be true, it would mean that Father Hejmo had been coerced into collaborating. "But I would never believe Father Hejmo had spontaneously lent his help."

Marcin Przeciszewski, head of the Catholic Information Agency, said: "Everyone who was at the Vatican had ... ties with Father Hejmo and there was absolutely no suspicion" of him.

In Warsaw, Mr Kieres said that earlier this month he had recognised the taped voice of a clergyman who was secretly telling agents of Poland's communist secret services about Pope John Paul II.

Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek told the Associated Press: "We are still not sure of the type of cooperation, whether he was simply talking about the holy father with the secret services or was actually providing secret information on him".

The true extent of Pope John Paul's involvement in the fall of communism in Europe remains a subject of debate and inquiry among historians. Most agree his inspiration was crucial to the Solidarity free trade union movement which in turn undermined Soviet influence in eastern Europe.

But unconfirmed claims have been made that the Vatican, under Pope John Paul's leadership, steered funds towards opposition movements in Poland and beyond.

There have been claims that the Polish secret services had tried to discredit the late pope in the 1980s by producing fake diaries from a woman purported to have had an affair with him.