When Will the Churches Take Action to Stop Minor Abuse?

After two years of investigation, a Dutch journalist based in Poland revealed new evidence of Pope John Paul II's involvement in covering up the abuse of minors when he was Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Krakow.

Ekke Overbeek found concrete cases of priests mistreating and sexually abusing children inside the church, where the future pope was archbishop.

Despite being aware of what was going on, he did nothing to stop such violations; he instead reappointed those priests, leading consequently to new victims.

 

Evidence of Minor Abuse

Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek, residing in Poland for several years, conducted an investigation to find the link between John Paul II and the cover-up of pedophilia by the Catholic Church.

After a two-year-inquiry, Overbeek finally revealed on Friday, December 2, the Polish pope’s involvement in covering up the abuse of minors long before he came to the Vatican, with the help of archival documents dating back to the period when Karol Wojtyla was the archbishop of the Archdiocese of Krakow.

The documents incriminate Pope John Paul II “in shielding priests allegedly involved in the sexual abuse of children during his tenure as archbishop,” according to NL Times.

Overbeek spent the last two years combing through archives in Poland to find many cases where the prominent Catholic Church figure knew about the sexual abuses but helped those involved to evade punishment by transferring some of them to other parishes.

“I found concrete cases of priests who abused children in the Archdiocese of Krakow, where the future pope was archbishop. The future pope knew about it and nevertheless transferred those men. That led to new victims," Overbeek said to Nieuwsuur.

The Dutch investigative journalist wrote a book about his revelations and conclusions, Maxima Culpa, that will be published next year in Polish.

“The documents that have been collected directly about Wojtyla have almost all been destroyed, but he is mentioned very often in other documents that have survived. And if you put them all together, they are puzzle pieces that form the picture of how he handled child abuse by priests, and how that has been dealt with," he said.

Stanislaw Obirek, a Warsaw University professor, said Overbeek’s investigation “is true enough to destroy the myths that John Paul II was a saint in his youth.”

 

What Churches Should Do?

In her interview with Al-Estiklal, civil society activist and child rights advocate, Hajar Kilani, said that the Catholic Church should abolish the requirement of priestly celibacy, as this would help it recruit clerics who do not abuse children.

“Catholic priests have been accused, at almost every level, of child abuse in many countries; in France, the number of victims is estimated at 216,000 during the last 70 years before 2020, and now, countries such as Poland, Portugal, and Spain are also investigating crimes related to sexual abuse of children," stressing that there is more to be revealed, as reports have begun to be published indicating the extent of violations against adults as well, including nuns.

"Investigations have recently been launched into what happened inside 9,000 Catholic institutions in poor countries; orphanages were also subject to such crimes," according to the activist.

Hajar said even in developed countries where criminal justice systems are well-resourced, investigations have been hampered by the secrecy that these institutions have enjoyed over the past decades.

“I believe that the main reason for the continuation of such violations is the lack of effective manners and sources through which victims can report abuses.

“When a few are given power over others, when checks on that power are weak, and when victims lack effective channels to report abuse, predators will take advantage of all of that; if an organization routinely conceals allegations and transfers the suspects to other jobs, rather than taking them to the police, the abuse will increase; now, the Church's efforts to stop sexual abuse are not enough," she argued.

Hajar concluded: "The requirement that priests be celibate increases the possibility of sexual crimes because having sex and building a family are the basis of life and the reason for human existence."

 

Attack Circumstances

Many of the documents were destroyed, but he could find enough papers to piece together to accuse the Polish pope, according to the journalist. The priest Eugeniusz Surgent, who died in 2008, was one of the accused sex offenders; he had asked for forgiveness from Wojtyla and promised he would never do it again, but he was not that honest.

Surgent was sentenced to three years in prison for sexually abusing 6 boys in the 1970s and continued to harm more children in the 1980s; this never barred him from preserving his position as a priest.

Tom Doyle, a Catholic priest who has spent his life exposing the sexual abuse of children inside churches, described Overbeek’s findings as “explosive.”

“It’s thorough and it’s true. It overturns the Pope’s former image,” he told the Dutch media. “He wasn’t part of the solution, he was part of the problem. He did nothing.”

Pope’s supporters, however, said that he did not know there were children sexually abused by priests under his watch until the mid-1980s, and the responsible was an American clergy, according to them.

Unfortunately, this “scandal” was not the first; a long series of accusations of sexual abuse has shacked the Polish church for years.

The release of the viral documentary Tell No One by journalist Tomasz Sekielski exposed many of these violations against minors.

Since 2020, the Vatican has sanctioned four Polish bishops for covering up pedophilia by priests and resigned two others.

This came after the Vatican’s probe into reports of the bishop’s indifference in the case of a priest who abused a child in the Diocese of Siedlce “when Kiernikowski was its head from 2002-2014,” according to the local church authorities’ statement.

A 97-year-old Polish Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz was also sanctioned after an unspecified inquiry, but he died. Archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz resigned, at that time, following accusations of harassing priests and not responding to allegations of sexual assault.

Hundreds of cases of sexual abuse of children by clergy in the Polish Catholic Church were since revealed.

“The church’s first report, for 1990-2018, listed cases of 382 clergymen having allegedly abused 625 minors,” according to Euronews.

 

Objection!

After Overbeek’s revelations, journalists investigating secular and Catholic Church sources in Poland called into question allegations by a Dutch writer about St. John Paul II's cover-ups of sexual abuse during his time as archbishop of Krakow from 1964 to 1978.

Polish reporters, Tomasz Krzyzak and Piotr Litka of Rzeczpospolita, said during their investigation that John Paul II did not hide any abuse, he, instead, acted against such allegations.

They point out that the “convicted” priest, Surgent, was not from the Archdiocese of Krakow but from the Diocese of Lubaczow.

They said that “the then archbishop of Krakow could not do anything about the fact that Surgent was working in two other dioceses.”

The Polish journalists also referred to another case revealing how Cardinal Wojtyla at the time dealt with abuse, such as Jozef Loranc’s case after allegations of sexually abusing young girls inside the church.

“The absence of punitive measures by the ecclesiastical court does not cancel the crime and does not undo the guilt,” Cardinal Wojtyla wrote in a 1971 letter to Loranc after he was released from prison.

For the reporters defending Pope John Paul II, “this behavior differs considerably from the practice of leniency toward those who had committed such crimes, which was common at the time.”

Krzyzak and Litka concluded that the church had never been tolerant towards minor sexual abuse and it always takes the necessary steps to stop the bleeding.