Poland: Bishop Kazimierz Nycz appointed at the head of the archdiocese of Warsaw
Benedict XVI named Bishop Kazimierz Nycz new metropolitan Archbishop of Warsaw. This nomination, announced on March 3 by the Vatican Press Office, followed the resignation of Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus due to revelations made concerning his past collaboration with the Communist secret police.
Aged 57, Bishop Kazimierz Nycz was ordained a priest on May 20, 1973, for the Archdiocese of Krakow. Vice-Rector of Krakow’s Major Seminary, he was named as an Auxiliary Bishop of Krakow in 1988. In June 2004 he was name Bishop of Koszalin-Kolobrzeg. In 1999, Bishop Nycz was also named as President of the Polish Bishops Conference Commission on Catholic Education, and in 2004 he became a Member of the Permanent Council of the Polish Bishops Conference.
In a letter sent to Archbishop Wielgus, on February 12, and made public on February 21 by the Vatican Press Office, Benedict XVI acknowledged “the difficulty of his mission under the Communist regime” and assured him of “his spiritual closeness” and of his “fraternal understanding.” “I thank you for the confidence with which you opened your soul to me, showing me the painful suffering of your heart during your whole life as a priest and as a bishop, until your resignation from the archbishopric of Warsaw,” he wrote.
On February 22, a special tribunal in Warsaw granted the request for a clarification of his past at the time of the former regime which had been made by Archbishop Wielgus. The inquest asked for by the ephemeral archbishop of Warsaw creates a precedent. Up to now, no Churchman had ever asked the State for an inquest concerning his Communist past. The archbishop himself admitted having had contact with the secret police, yet he affirmed that in fact he never followed up on the collaboration demanded of him.
The Institute of National Memory in Warsaw is responsible for updating the dossiers of the former Communist secret police (SB). Two independent commissions of historians, one of them mandated by the Church, examined the documents and found that Archbishop Wielgus had collaborated with full awareness. Archbishop Wielgus’ lawyer, Marel Malecki, stated that part of the documents from the SB produced against his client were bogus. On the contrary, the rector of the Institute of National Memory held the documents as authentic.
