Tornado Alley (PROG)

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(COMTEX) B: Polish priest at Vatican was informer for communist secret police,
official says ( AP WorldStream )

WARSAW, Poland, Apr 27, 2005 (AP WorldStream via COMTEX) -- A Polish priest at
the Vatican was accused Wednesday of collaborating with the communist-era secret
police during the 1980s even as Pope John Paul II inspired his countrymen to
resist the Soviet-backed regime.

The Rev. Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo, a member of the Dominican religious order, "was
a secret collaborator of the Polish secret services under the names Hejnal and
Dominik," Leon Kieres, head of the National Remembrance Institute, said at a
news conference. The institute guards communist-era police files.

Kieres did not provide details or documentary proof to reporters, saying they
will be published in May.

He said more documents about spying on church figures are to be published later
this year in a book by a historian given special access to documents at the
institute.

Hejmo, 69, said in a phone interview broadcast by Polish state television that
"there could have been some recordings tied, glued together. ... It is hard for
me to say now, I am not really aware now what this is." It wasn't clear what
recordings he might have referred to.

Hejmo's Dominican superior, the Rev. Maciej Zieba, told reporters at the news
conference he had seen the files, which he called "convincing and shocking."

Andrzej Paczkowski, a historian at the institute, said the files contain some
700 pages and cover the 1980s and earlier years. He said Hejmo was not "some
very important person."

Hejmo was an ever-present figure at John Paul's public events in his white
robes, leading Polish pilgrims around and taking selected groups up to see the
pope.

He was close to the pope's entourage, but not a member of the inner circle.
During the pope's recent hospitalization, for instance, he escorted the bishop
of Zakopane, a town in southern Poland, to the Gemelli Polyclinic but did not go
up to see the pope himself.

He had extensive contacts with Poles who visited Rome, and had arranged housing
and other assistance for Polish refugees who had fled the communist regime,
according to Poland's Catholic Information Agency news service.

Observers and church officials warned against passing a hasty judgment.

"We are still not sure of the type of the cooperation, whether he was simply
talking about the Holy Father with the secret services or was actually providing
secret information on him," Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek told The Associated Press.
"If he was providing information, than this would be a very sad truth."

Hejmo had been widely quoted about the pope's condition in the news media in the
days leading up to John Paul's death April 2. He has served at the Vatican since
1979.

Polish-born John Paul, elected pope in 1978, would have been of great interest
to the secret police because of his role in inspiring the Solidarity trade union
opposition to the communist regime, which collapsed in 1989.

The release of communist-era information has created turmoil in Poland recently
with the leak of an index to files in the custody of the remembrance institute.

The so-called Wildstein list, named after the journalist who obtained it, caused
controversy and confusion because it lists both people who informed and people
who were spied on without distinguishing between them.

In another prominent case, the spokeswoman for the first post-communist
government, Malgorzata Niezabitowska, has gone to court seeking a ruling that
she was not a collaborator. A colleague at a communist-era underground newspaper
has alleged she denounced other journalists.

Accusations of collaboration are a serious matter in Poland, many see
cooperation with the Soviet-backed government as shameful.

Earlier this month, Kieres said he had recognized the taped voice of a clergyman
who was secretly telling agents of Poland's communist secret services about Pope
John Paul II. He said the news would have been "painful" to the pope.

By MONIKA SCISLOWSKA
Associated Press Writer

Copyright 2005 Associated Press, All rights reserved

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