WARSAW, Feb 18 — In a landmark case for the deeply Catholic country, a Polish bishop will go to trial on Wednesday for allegedly covering up acts of paedophilia committed by priests in his diocese.
This is the first case in which a high-ranking church hierarchy has faced criminal charges for failing to inform authorities of church abuse by clergy.
“This is a spectacular case, and, in Polish realities, essentially unprecedented,” Artur Nowak, a lawyer, publicist, and writer who appeared in a watershed documentary about sexual abuse in the Catholic church in Poland, told AFP.
According to prosecutors, Tarnow bishop Andrzej Jez was aware of two cases of priests abusing underage altar boys.
One of the priests in the southern Polish city, Stanislaw P. – whose last name has been withheld due to Polish privacy laws – is believed to have abused 95 children, and committed sexual crimes against 77.
It was one of the largest cases of sexual abuse reported in the Catholic church in Poland – with incidents going as far back as the 1980s, in every parish where P. had served.
Neither clergyman was charged – the former’s victims were not able to precisely determine when the abuse took place, while the second priest, Fr. Tomasz K., claimed poor health, and the case was dropped.
Stanislaw P., however, was ultimately stripped of his priesthood by the church.
‘Solid evidence’
In previous cases of alleged church coverups, prosecutors had declined to open investigations into church officials – arguing that the criminal code did not contain provisions requiring law enforcement to be notified in cases of abuse.
But a 2017 amendment to the code made it obligatory to notify law enforcement immediately in cases of sexual offences committed against children under 15.
The local curia denies the accusations against bishop Jez, writing in a statement on Tuesday that “the authorities of the Tarnow diocese made a dozen or so reports to law enforcement over the past years, implementing a ‘zero tolerance’ policy”.
Nowak, however, said that “by filing an indictment against such a high?ranking prelate, the prosecutor’s office must have had solid evidence”.
“If they had doubts, they wouldn’t have taken the case to court,” he added.
Zbigniew Cwiakalski, from the bishop’s defence team, declined to comment to AFP ahead of the trial.
With 88.8 per cent of Poles feeling a “sense of belonging” to the Catholic church, the country had, until recently, seemed to be bucking the broader European trend towards secularisation.
But an increasing number of abuse scandals coming to light, popular pushback against the country’s strict abortion laws, and concern over the church’s involvement in politics contributed to a steep decline in the number of practising Catholics, even if they remain nominally Catholic.
Last year, Poland’s Centre for Public Opinion Research CBOS found that only 34 per cent of Poles said they attended weekly mass – down from almost 70 per cent in the early 1990s.
Church abuse scandals have even touched former Polish Pope John Paul II.
His role in the downfall of the communist regime earned him world renown, but investigations into his time as archbishop of Krakow in the 1960s and 1970s accused him of neglecting to report known cases of child sexual abuse.
In 2021, the Vatican intervened, barring three Polish bishops from celebrating mass in public and mandating that they leave their dioceses and pay into a fund for victims, over allegations of negligence.
Growing secularisation
Although the Polish constitution is secular, Poland has a concordat with the Holy See, which acknowledges the close ties between the church and state, and provides – among others – for Catholic religious education funded by and held in public schools.
A 2025 study in the “Nature Communications” journal found that Poland is the world’s fastest-secularising country, especially among young people.
Earlier this week, a commission formed to investigate child sex abuse in Poland identified at least 50 children who were harmed and 29 suspected of abusing minors, most of them clergy.
It revealed that local bishops had repeatedly failed to act when they received credible reports of abuse.
On Tuesday a seperate Polish district court began the trial of a priest accused of nine sexual offences against minors, as well as possession of child sexual abuse materials.
He faces up to 30 years in prison.
This March, Polish bishops will meet in Warsaw in order to vote on a nationwide church commission on paedophilia. — AFP
