Catholic Church in Poland reports hundreds of new abuse allegations

CNA Staff   By CNA Staff

June 29, 2021 Catholic News Agency News Briefs 1 Print

Archbishop Polak, center, at a press conference presenting a report on clerical abuse in Poland, June 28, 2021. / @EpiskopatNews via Twitter

Warsaw, Poland, Jun 29, 2021 / 04:00 am (CNA).

The Catholic Church in Poland announced Monday that it had received 368 allegations of clerical abuse in the past two and a half years.

The claims relate to abuse reportedly committed by 292 priests and religious between 1958 and 2020.

A report released June 28 by the Institute of Statistics of the Catholic Church said that the allegations were made between July 1, 2018, and Dec. 31, 2020.

The report comes at a time of upheaval in the Polish Catholic Church. Since November 2020, the Vatican has disciplined a series of mainly retired Polish bishops after investigations under Pope Francis’ 2019 motu proprio Vos estis lux mundi.

On Monday, Bishop Zbigniew Kiernikowski resigned as bishop of Legnica, southwestern Poland, days before his 75 birthday after a Vos estis probe into his handling of clerical abuse cases.

Days earlier, the Vatican took action against two other Polish bishops after investigations.

Cardinal Stanisław Dziwisz, a former aide to St. John Paul II, is facing a Vatican investigation into claims that he mishandled abuse cases while serving as archbishop of Kraków from 2005 to 2016.

The new report said that half of the allegations made since mid-2018 were still under investigation. Around 40% were considered confirmed or substantiated at the preliminary stage or by the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, while 10% were considered unfounded and rejected.

Of the 173 cases that concerned children under the age of 15, 148 were reported to state law enforcement agencies. Of the 25 that were not reported, 13 related to deceased clergy, eight were considered unfounded, and four were still being verified when the new report was compiled.

Sixty-eight of the 368 allegations concerned religious orders, while 300 related to dioceses.

The new figures follow a previous report, published in March 2019, which said that 382 allegations of clerical abuse were made between 1990 and 2018, relating to incidents from 1950 to 2018.

Presenting the new report at a press conference on June 28, Poland’s primate Archbishop Wojciech Polak noted that bishops’ conference president Archbishop Stanislaw Gądecki had highlighted the sin of clerical abuse as he consecrated Poland to the Sacred Heart on June 11.

“Today, as delegate of the Polish bishops’ conference for the protection of children and young people, I turn to the wronged and all scandalized by evil in the Church, once again asking for forgiveness,” Polak said.

The archbishop also thanked journalists for their role in uncovering clerical abuse.

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Priest assisting in identification of Essex lorry deaths

November 4, 2019 CNA Daily News 1

Brentwood, England, Nov 4, 2019 / 05:19 pm (CNA).- After 39 people were found dead in a semi trailer in eastern England last month, a Catholic priest has joined efforts to identify these victims.

On Oct. 23, the bodies of eight women and 31 men were found in a refrigerated lorry trailer at an industrial site in Grays, fewer than 15 miles south of Brentwood in Essex.

A number of victims have yet to be identified, but all of them are now believed to be Vietnamese. The causes of death have also yet to be discovered, but post-mortem examinations are underway.

A Catholic priest in the UK is also working with some of the victims’ families to discover these people’s identities. Father Simon Nguyen, a priest at the Church of the Holy Name and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, has worked with two of the victims’ families, who are too scared to bring their information directly to the police.

“I asked them if you find it very difficult to contact the police, could you please pass [on details of] your relatives and friends in the container, their identities,” he told ITV News.

“They gave me the names and all the pictures and all the marks on the body.”

Nguyen spoke at a memorial service Nov. 2 at the Church of the Holy Name and Our Lady of the Sacred Heart in east London attended by more than 100 people.

“We show our condolences and sympathies for the people who have lost their lives on the way to seeking freedom, dignity and happiness,” he said, according to BBC.

“We ask God to welcome them into his kingdom even though some of them were not Catholic but they strongly believed in eternal peace, so we pray for them.”

On the following day at the same church, Auxiliary Bishop Nicholas Hudson of Westminster encouraged people attending Mass to pray for those affected by the event.

St. Thomas of Canterbury Catholic Church in Grays also established a memorial in honor of the victims, according to a Nov. 2 tweet from the Diocese of Brentwood.

The British and Vietnamese governments have arrested or held more than ten suspects, and have begun efforts to identify these victims. Essex Police said it was working with the Vietnamese government and some of the victims’ families in the United Kingdom and Vietnam, the BBC reported.

In the UK, two people connected to the incident have been arrested – Maurice Robinson, the semi-truck driver, and Eamonn Harrison, a 22-year-old from Ireland. Both of them have been charged with a slew of offenses including conspiracy to commit human trafficking and 39 accounts of manslaughter.

Ronan and Christopher Hughes – two Northern Ireland brothers who have links to the shipping industries – are wanted for these same charges.

A spokeswoman for Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs described the incident as a “serious humanitarian tragedy.” The country’s governments is working to uncover the identities of the victims and perpetrators.

The Vietnamese government has arrested eight suspects for smuggling offenses. They said the suspects are part of a criminal ring that deals in illegal immigration. The country’s authorities have also collected DNA samples to cross-reference with the victims in the UK.

“Based on what we learn from the suspects, we will actively launch investigations to fight and eradicate these rings which bring people illegally to Britain,” said Nguyen Huu Cau, the Nghe An province police chief, according to The Guardian.

“The best thing to do now is to deal with the consequences of the incident and help family members receive the bodies,” he added.

Since the incident, Catholic and secular groups have expressed a need for better migration policies. Maurice Wren, chief executive of the Refugee Council, described the incident as deplorable but preventable.

“This is truly tragic news, but depressingly predictable and avoidable news,” said Wren.

“If you deny people safe and regular travel routes to find safety, you are leaving them with no choice but to risk their lives on utterly perilous journeys and in the hands of criminal gangs.”

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