WARSAW (POLAND)
New York Daily News
June 26, 2021
By Brandon Sapienza
The Vatican’s Polish embassy said on Saturday that the Holy See sent an envoy to Poland for more than a week to investigate reports of abuse from Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, a close confidant to Pope St. John Paul II.
The envoy was headed by retired Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who along with his team, held numerous meetings and reviewed documents relating to the abuse allegations.
“The aim was to verify signals, also made in public, of negligence by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz during his term as the archbishop of Krakow (2005-2016),” the Holy See embassy said in a statement.
At the conclusion of the investigation, Bagnasco will present his findings to high-ranking officials at the Vatican.
In 2012, the Rev. Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, a Polish priest, gave Dziwsz a letter that contained evidence of a fellow priest sexually abusing a 12-year-old altar server. Initially, Dziwsz denied the letter and believed that there should be an investigation into the evidence. He later said that the letter had been found.
Isakowicz-Zaleski said that not long ago, he was questioned about a “certain Polish bishop” by members of the Vatican’s envoy.
“That means that Pope Francis is probably losing his patience with the leaders of the Polish Episcopate,” Isakowicz-Zaleski said to ABC News.
In addition to looking into the now-deceased Dziwisz, the Vatican is investigating the alleged lack of reaction that high ranking members of the Polish clergy have had when hearing about sexual abuse allegations against minors.
The Poland government has their own commission that is investigating over 300 reports of sex abuse for children under the age of 15. The commission said this week that nearly 30% of those investigations involve clergymen as the accused.
The State Commission for Pedophilia has already asked the Vatican permission to see its own documents pertaining to sexual abuse cases due to the fact that the leaders of the Polish church were not cooperating with investigators.
