The forced resignation this month of the new archbishop of Warsaw not only shines a spotlight on problems in the Catholic Church in Poland, but also on the leadership of Pope Benedict XVI.Benedict XVI is learning just how difficult it is to be Pope. After the recent qualified recovery from his incautious, unnecessary quotation about Muhammad - a quote that caused uproar in the Muslim world - along came what could only be described as a second pratfall.
The crisis came to a head when Warsaw's new archbishop, Stanislaw Wielgus, resigned on January 7, the eve of his installation, after admitting he had collaborated with the reviled communist-era Polish security service, the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa.
Pope Benedict bears responsibility for the appointment of Wielgus as archbishop of Warsaw, an appointment that would have led to Wielgus being made a cardinal, a member of the equivalent of the Catholic Church's Senate. Though Benedict partly retrieved the situation by ensuring Wielgus's swift resignation, the overall impression is that of a pope who is all thumbs.
Benedict appointed Wielgus as archbishop even though he was aware that he had been an informer. Through his spokesman, Benedict reaffirmed the choice even after the Polish press carried the first disclosures about the 67-year-old bishop-academic.
The tardy backflip came only after Benedict was persuaded by further documents uncovered by the media that Wielgus had not supplied a full and frank account of his role as informer.
The affair has similarities with the pedophile-priest scandals which the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger handled before his election as Pope Benedict XVI.
In both cases, initial press reports of irregularities were discounted and the suspect churchmen were strenuously defended until, very late in the day, he acted.
He also ignored accusations of pedophilia against Father Marcial Maciel, the Mexican founder of the powerful Legion of Christ religious order, before he eventually fostered sanctions against him.
W ielgus had become an informer to obtain permission to study in West Germany in the 1970s where, among other things, he met the young Ratzinger. Wielgus says his activities under the code names "Adam" and "Gray" were innocuous and at the time the practice of collaboration behind the Iron Curtain was not uncommon. There are some estimates that up to 15 per cent of Polish priests co-operated with authorities in some way.
Many aspirant priests were contacted by the secret police when seminary students and promised advantages. Once they collaborated, files on them were initiated in which it was almost impossible to distinguish facts from falsehoods.