Weathering the storm

Polish Catholics rally to their Church undeterred by a new crisis, as Jonathan Luxmoore explains

Karczew, Poland - In this market town southeast of Warsaw, a vast crowd of all ages moves slowly away from the baroque tree-lined St Vitus church along a shopping street festooned with confetti and rose petals, repeating religious refrains chanted over loudspeakers.

Up ahead, watched by white-gloved police and firefighters, a brass band falls quiet, as a priest intones prayers at one of the ornate altars marking the traditional two-hour procession route.

When Corpus Christi was marked this summer with similar ceremonies across Poland, it was a reminder of the vibrancy of popular devotions in this overwhelmingly Catholic country.

Today, that vibrancy has been called into question by a spate of scandals and controversies, which many Polish Catholics fear could damage the Church's authority.

Others are confident, however, that the Church will survive the latest challenges, just as it survived earlier decades of foreign occupation and communist misrule. "The negative publicity has certainly provoked discussion - but it only affects a small number of clergy, and is unlikely to affect church attendance or seriously erode public loyalties", explained Malgorzata Glabisz-Pniewska, a senior Catholic presenter with Polish Radio.

"The most devout Catholics, who were brought up under communist rule, remain deeply unwilling to speak or act against the Church, knowing how this could damage it. It often happens that the hardest blows are answered by the strongest shows of support."

Over the three decades since the peaceful overthrow of communism, the Polish Church has weathered numerous storms over its place in public life, as well as over such issues as abortion and school religion, land and property profiteering, and accusations that its clergy were infiltrated by communist informers.

To this turbulent litany has been added intermittent accusations of clerical sex abuse, which exploded into the open last May when a TV documentary exposed how crimes by priests had been ignored and covered up.

"This film has proved a significant catalyst for a cleansing process - it's no longer enough to seek improper, superficial, communist-style ways out," Fr Adam Zak, a Jesuit priest acting as the Church's national co-ordinator for child protection, admitted to Poland's Catholic Information Agency, KAI. "We have to admit we made mistakes and failed to follow the right path - we have to stop proudly believing we're better than others and hiding behind our historical experiences of persecution.”

When Fr Zak was appointed in 2013, amid growing media accusations of inaction, Poland's Catholic bishops had already adopted abuse guidelines in line with Vatican directives. By September 2018, all 43 dioceses had child-protection officers, while hundreds of clergy had been trained in prevention and counselling by a special Church centre in Krakow.

This failed to deter a barrage of criticisms, which reached a head when a salacious anti-clerical cinema film, Kler (Clergy), broke box-office records that autumn. In a November 2018 statement, the bishops apologised to "God, the victims, their families and the Church community" for clerical abuse and pledged "illumination, strength and courage" in countering the "moral and spiritual corruption" which had caused it. And in February, on the eve of a Vatican child protection summit, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki of Poznan, the Bishops Conference President, agreed for the first time to meet abuse survivors.

However, in a report that same month, a victims’ support group, Nie Lekajcie Sie ("Do Not Be Afraid"), accused 24 serving and retired Church leaders of violating canon law and secular regulations by "concealing clerical crimes".

The report was presented to the Pope in person on 20 February, but bitterly attacked in the Polish Church, with dioceses and religious orders questioning its accuracy.

But pressure was mounting. And at a March plenary, attended in Warsaw by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State, the Bishops Conference appointed Poland's Catholic Primate, Archbishop Wojciech Polak of Gniezno, as its first child protection delegate and published its own report, listing abuse claims against 382 priests over a period of three decades.

The document said 44 percent of claims had been investigated by state prosecutors, with around half resulting in convictions, but conceded there had also been "a certain ignorance" when it came to Church rules on abuse, as well as "differences of reliability" between Polish dioceses and orders in responding to enquiries.

Poland's secular media accused the Bishops Conference of selectiveness. And in May, a major blow was struck by the two-hour television documentary, Tylko nie mów nikomu (Just Don't Tell Anyone"), by investigative journalist Tomasz Sekielski, which attracted 20 million views within a week of its YouTube posting.

Sekielski's film linked abuse with secretive Church structures, and graphically recorded the evasive behaviour of perpetrators when confronted by victims. It too charged senior Catholic prelates with concealing clergy crimes, and with failing to act when convicted paedophile priests continued celebrating Mass and working with children. It was also well timed, appearing just two days after the Pope's Motu Proprio, "Vos Estis Lux Mundi", established new procedures for holding Church leaders accountable for abuse.

The Bishops Conference responded with a pastoral message, thanking the film's makers for their exposures and lamenting that the Church had "not done everything" to counter child abuse. "There are no words to express our shame - we thank everyone who had courage to talk about their suffering," the message said. "By presenting the perspective of those harmed, this film has alerted us to the magnitude of their suffering, and everyone with any sensitivity will feel pain, emotion and sadness."

The bishops promised to appoint a legal team to analyse the causes of abuse and foster awareness in Catholic communities, while several dioceses and religious orders issued their own protection guidelines, and at least one archbishop, Slawoj Glodz of Gdansk, was forced to apologise after initially denouncing the documentary as "garbage”.

None of this satisfied Poland's more ardent anti-clerical groups. Some Catholics vowed to boycott Masses celebrated by implicated Church leaders, while at least one prominent figure, Mgr Andrzej Szostek, formerly Rector of the Catholic University of Lublin, called on the whole Bishops Conference to tender its resignation, following the example of Chile's bishops in May 2018.

‘But with a model of mass religiousness inherited from the communist era, Catholics point out, the Church thrives when under attack, and has a long-proven track record of rallying popular support against opponents’

In the meantime, dire predictions have continued about the impact of Sekielski's film. In two June surveys by the government-controlled CBOS agency, the Polish Church's public approval rating dropped to a 24-year low, while the proportion of youngsters declaring themselves believers plummeted from 81 to 63 percent.

St Mary’s Basilica, Krakow: the Polish Church still provides around a third of all priestly vocations in Europe

For the first time in a country known for its adulation of St John Paul II, questions have also been asked in the media about the Polish Pope's stance against abuse, forcing Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, his former assistant, to issue statements in his defence. In May, a giant statue of the pontiff was covered over at the Marian Basilica of Lichen because it depicted the basilica's still-living founder, Fr Eugeniusz Makulski, who was branded a paedophile in the film.

"The Church faces a real challenge now - how to learn from its mistakes, and how to reassure society", Fr Zak, the child protection co-ordinator, told the KAI agency. "There must be a change in mentality and action so the faithful are no longer ashamed of their pastors, and so priests can see which skeletons lurk in their cupboards."

Beneath the surface, however, there's confidence the Polish Church will weather the latest storm.

The great majority of ordinary priests and committed parishioners, untainted by any scandals, have suffered by having their service to the Church, in the words of the Polish bishops' pastoral message, "obscured by the sins of individuals through collective responsibility".

But with a model of mass religiousness inherited from the communist era, Catholics point out, the Church thrives when under attack, and has a long-proven track record of rallying popular support against opponents. By penitently thanking Sekielski for his film, the bishops have wrong-footed those who expected reactions of outrage and denial. By encouraging prayers and acts of penance, they've also created conditions for a robust recovery once public opinion moves on.

This may already be happening

Despite its closeness to the Catholic Church, Poland's governing centre-right Law and Justice party, PiS, was victorious in crucial May European Parliament elections, and when the fortieth anniversary of John Paul II’s historic first homecoming pilgrimage was marked in June, it drew large enthusiastic crowds. Within a fortnight, the CBOS agency had recorded a five percent recovery in the Church's approval rating.

With Catholics making up 86 percent of the country's population of 38 million, according to the latest statistical yearbook, the Polish Church still provides around a third of all priestly vocations in Europe, and is needed as an authoritative, articulate, disciplined voice in contemporary moral and religious discourses. It also needs to be a modern Church - open, reliable and trusted: and this will mean rising above the damage inflicted by a tiny corrupt minority.

"If our Church does decline, it won't be because of abuse scandals, but deeper secularising trends", Glabisz-Pniewska, the Polish Radio presenter, told Mass of Ages. "Certainly, contests are being played out discreetly in the ranks of its hierarchy, as younger figures emerge with a different narrative and a firmer grasp of current priorities.

“But for now, at least, the Church is too firmly grounded in Poland's past and present to suffer any lasting damage. People will stay with it, not because they necessarily admire it, but because it answers their religious needs.”