St. John Paul II knew about the sexual abuse of children by priests under his authority and sought to conceal it when he was an archbishop in his native Poland, a television news report has alleged.
In a story that aired late Monday, Polish channel TVN24 named three priests whom the future pope then known as Archbishop Karol Wojtyla had moved among parishes or sent to a cloister during the 1970s, including one who was sent to Austria, after they were accused of abusing minors.Two of the priests, Eugeniusz Surgent and Jozef Loranc, eventually served short prison terms for the abuse, TVN24 said its 2 and 1/2 year-long investigation found.
The broadcast featured a journalist who has written about cases of priestly abuse in Krakow diocese and who argued that Wojtyla reacted in line with Catholic Church procedures of the time. Polish church officials tasked with the protection of minors said in a communique Tuesday that further research was needed before Wojtyla’s actions could be “fairly assessed.” The officials stressed that the church was prepared to hear from abuse survivors and to support them.A photo taken in 1943 during World War II shows Joseph Ratzinger as a German Air Force assistant.
An official at the Ministry of Education, Radoslaw Brzozka, said on Twitter that John Paul II’s reputation was under attack from people who want to eliminate Catholicism from Poland’s national identity.His immediate successor, Benedict XVI, who had a much stricter stance and defrocked hundreds of abusive priests, was faulted by an independent report commissioned by the German Catholic Church for his handling of four cases while he was Munich bishop.
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