Polish bishops announce ‘independent’ probe of child sexual abuse

In this Sunday, May 25 1997 file photo, Wroclaw Metropolitan Cardinal, Henryk Gulbinowicz, left, and Legate of the Holy See Cardinal Angelo Sodano on their way to Wroclaw cathedral, in Poland. (AP Photo/Adam Hawalej, file)

The Polish Bishop’s Conference on Thursday announced plans to establish an “independent” commission to investigate child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.

It follows years of planning by Polish bishops, who first began work on establishing the body in 2023.

“The commission should be credible, independent, and able to work in a competent manner,” said Archbishop Wojciech Polak of the Polish Bishops’ Conference for the protection of children and young people.

The Catholic Church in Poland, long regarded as a bastion of the faith in Europe, has in recent years been rocked by a succession of scandals that have severely damaged its image.

The Vatican has already sanctioned several bishops judged negligent.

In 2021, the Vatican barred three Polish bishops from celebrating mass in public and ordered their dioceses to pay into a fund for victims over allegations of negligence.

In Poland, the hierarchy has been pushed to publish unprecedented data on complaints filed against the church.

In 2021 it revealed that between 2018 and 2020, 368 reports of abuse involving 292 priests and religious had been recorded for the period 1958–2020. Of those, 173 concerned children under the age of 15.

Civil authorities however believe these figures are an underestimate, as most victims came forward only decades later.

Bishop on trial

The elections of the committee’s chair are set to take place at the next meeting of the Polish Bishops’ Conference in June.

Last month, a commission investigating child sex abuse in the Sosnowiec diocese in southern Poland identified at least 50 children who were harmed and 29 suspected abusers, most of them clergy.

Local bishops had repeatedly failed to act when they received credible reports of abuse, it said.

One week later, the bishop of Tarnow (southern Poland) Andrzej Jez went on trial accused of having covered up pedophilia by priests in his diocese, the first such case in Poland.

In previous cases of alleged church cover-ups, prosecutors had declined to open investigations into church officials, arguing that the criminal code did not require police to be notified.

But a 2017 amendment to the code made it obligatory in cases of sexual offences committed against children under 15.

“All those who have been harmed, or those who have information on the subject, will be able to contact the commission in order to give their testimony,” Archbishop Polak told journalists on Thursday.

“There is no category of person who would be excluded,” he added.