2023-03-08 13:45 update: 2023-03-09, 19:13
Mateusz Morawiecki. Photo PAP/Albert Zawada
Mateusz Morawiecki, the Polish prime minister, said on Wednesday he stood in defence of Pope John Paul II, following media accusations that the late pontiff had covered up child sex abuse in the church when he was an archbishop.
On Monday, private broadcaster TVN24 aired 'Franciszkanska 3,' a report by journalist Marcin Gutowski, which investigated the cases of three priests: Boleslaw Sadus, Eugeniusz Surgent and Jozef Loranc.
The report alleged that the then Metropolitan of Krakow, Cardinal Karol Wojtyla, who later became Pope John Paul II, knew about cases of child sex abuse by the three priests under his authority but allowed them to continue working in the church and may even have helped to cover it up.
On Wednesday, Morawiecki took to Twitter to defend the late pope, whom he said Poland had a great deal to thank for.
"Today war is raging not only beyond our eastern border," Morawiecki tweeted. "Unfortunately there are groups who are trying to wage not military but civilisational war on us, in Poland. These are actions that go beyond a civilised debate and beyond a civic dispute. John Paul II's list of merits is inexhaustible, both for the world and for Poland. Evidence that John Paul II took up the fight against wickedness, including in the church, is plentiful. There is no evidence, or very, very doubtful (evidence) that he consciously ignored such acts."
The prime minister said testimony from the former communist-era security services had affected John Paul II for decades and that these attacks were "part of a wider civilisational context" and came from group seeking to overturn "tradition, culture and normality."
"I stand today in defence of our beloved pope because, like the vast majority of my compatriots, I know that as a nation we owe John Paul II a very great deal," Morawiecki wrote. "Maybe we owe him everything." (PAP)
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