‘It’s blunt stubbornness and unwillingness not only to accept the truth, but also to obey the Vatican,’ said Alina Obolevič, who has published her testimony of abuse by Henryk Gulbinowicz.
The guilt of the late Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz is not in doubt, Archbishop Gintaras Grušas of Vilnius said, after local politicians questioned Church sanctions against the Polish prelate for sexual abuse.
Following an investigation, in November 2020 the Vatican barred Gulbinowicz from public appearances and ordered him to pay compensation to a fund for abuse victims. He died that month aged 97, and was denied burial in the cathedral in Wrocław, where he was archbishop from 1976 to 2004.
“In ecclesiastical processes, the Holy See is the highest instance and the last appellate institution, and its announced decision is final and unappealable,” Archbishop Grušas said on 10 October.
“The fact that the Holy See, having investigated the charges brought against Cardinal Henryk Gulbinowicz for sexual abuse of a minor and other crimes, found him guilty, banned him from any public clerical activity, deprived him of the right to wear the insignia of a bishop and the privilege of being buried in a cathedral, is already a sign of the seriousness of the crime under investigation.”
Grušas made the statement after Vilnius District Council voted not to rename streets in the area that carry Gulbinowicz’s name and not to revoke his honorary citizenship of the district, where he was born in 1923 when the region was part of Poland.
“I am a Christian and I cannot raise my hand to slander a man who perhaps did not violate anything at all, neither laws nor moral standards,” said Marija Rekst of Electoral Action of Poles in Lithuania-Christian Families Alliance (LLRA-KŠS), a party that promotes the interests of Lithuania’s Polish minority, speaking to the lrt.lt news site on the day of the council vote.
The Vatican sanctions followed an investigation that found he had committed multiple counts of child sexual abuse, covered up clerical paedophilia and acted as an informant for Poland’s Communist authorities for 16 years.
Alina Obolevič, a resident of Vilnius, first encountered Gulbinowicz in 1987 when she was an 11-year-old girl preparing for her First Communion in the village of Buivydžiai of the Vilnius District.
“Just before our First Holy Confession, the local priest confronted the group of children with the fact that we were being given a great honour and would go to our first confession not to our village priest but to the archbishop from Poland, Gulbinowicz, who was born in a neighbouring village,” she told The Tablet.
“I knelt down at the confessional and began to tell in detail my sins. For some reason, Gulbinowicz kept interrupting me and changing the subject. First, he asked if I had kissed boys. I replied that I had not, because I was still too young, and continued to list my sins.
“Gulbinowicz interrupted me again, it was clear that he was not at all interested in my confession, and he continued the topic he had started and insistently asked if I had touched boys’ body parts, and told me to tell him exactly and very honestly where I had touched the boys and what their body parts looked like. I replied, confused, that I had not touched any of the boys’ parts or kissed them …
“I tried to get back to my confession, but Gulbinowicz was impatient, irritated … I was stunned, I felt that this was not how the First Holy Confession should be at all, this was not how our village priest told us about the first confession. But I didn’t know what to do, I couldn’t run away, because without the First Holy Confession I wouldn’t be allowed to receive the First Holy Communion.
“I knelt in the confessional, confused, and waited to see what would happen next. Gulbinowicz was acting strangely, not listening to me, and for some reason he was sighing. I looked through the bars of the confessional and saw that he was doing something quickly under his clothes. He was moving his hand and sighing …
“At that time, I still didn’t understand what he was doing. I just felt unpleasant, disgusting. I was in shock. I felt as if I had been deceived. Now I understand that he masturbated while forcing me to talk about boys’ genitals, satisfying himself in front of the child in the confessional …”
She tried to tell her family about the incident, but they dismissed her story as a fabrication. “Besides, it was the Soviet era, so there was no question of contacting the institutions, or publicising the incident … Eventually, my psyche apparently pushed all of this into the subconscious. Over time, I forgot…
“I only remembered the childhood incident when it became known in Poland about Gulbinowicz’s possible paedophilia, when articles appeared that Gulbinowicz, who was already a cardinal, was suspected of molesting and raping children,” she said.
Obolevič said she did not provide her testimony to any Church investigation but recently started to share accounts of her trauma on social media posts, and has spoken to Lithuanian and Polish media.
She said she would be ready to testify in court, adding that she was ashamed of the district council’s decision not to rename its streets.
“It’s blunt stubbornness and unwillingness not only to accept the truth, but also to obey the court’s decisions, the Vatican’s position,” Obolevič said.
She suggested that local politicians were influenced by a “cult of Gulbinowicz” who was useful for the ruling party, both as a political ally and a financial supporter.
“If now the administration were to admit that they were wrong, they would lose some of their influence and people’s trust, and they would have to admit a lot of their own mistakes,” Obolevič told The Tablet.
Jurgita Komar, who owns a farm complex in Gulbinowicz Street in the neighbouring village of Punžoniai, said she was offended by the honours for the late cardinal and wants them removed.
“It really angers me when the ruling party, while portraying themselves as great Catholics, defenders of families and parading their ties with Poland, for some reason choose to completely deny this particular issue,” she told The Tablet. “For me, as a mother of three children, it is extremely painful just to think that a priest could do this.”