Survivors of clergy sex abuse have written to the Polish bishops’ conference demandingan an investigation of its president. They have accused Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda of Gdansk of negligence in handling a sexual abuse case.
“In many Polish dioceses...the welfare of institutions turns out to be more important than human suffering,” they said.
Their letter, with 46 signatories, is the largest joint initiative to date from Polish abuse survivors. One of the letter’s three authors told OSV News: “Until today, we spoke as individuals. This is the first time our voice is heard as a group in Poland. We wanted the bishops to know – we are together.”
They asked the bishops to meet them “later in 2024” during a plenary meeting, and also requested that every diocesan scheme to help victims should include a woman in its administration, besides their demand that Archbishop Wojda be suspended pending an investigation of his handling of abuse cases in Gdansk.
The Catholic journal Wiez reported that survivors reporting abuse in Gdansk had been “improperly” treated by diocesan officials.
“Lack of compassion and manipulating testimonies on the part of the priest who was hearing them are only two things to start with in this long litany of what seems to be really grave errors,” said Zbigniew Nosowski, the journal’s editor-in-chief.
Details of the archbishop’s alleged negligence surfaced in February 2022 in the Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny.
This March, a victim sent a letter to the apostolic nuncio in Warsaw accusing Wojda of negligence. It mentioned a priest accused of abuse by two victims in 2021 who was appointed deputy chaplain of a psychiatric hospital two years later. One of the victims was between 13 and 18 years old at the time of the alleged abuse.
According to Wiez, the priest’s role in the hospital gave him “the opportunity for unfettered contact with people in deep mental crisis, including minors”.
Fr Leszek Gesiak, the spokesman for the bishops’ conference said the “issues contained in the letter” sent by the 46 victims would be “taken up” at a meeting soon.