May 10, 2012 — Zaleski’s Choice

“The Church (in Poland) didn’t want to hurt the Pope (John Paul II), but actually, more harm was done by keeping silent.” —Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, 55, a Polish Roman Catholic and Armenian Catholic priest, author and activist (photo below). Born in 1956, in Cracow, Poland, Isakowicz-Zaleski was an activist of the anti-communist student opposition in Cracow in the late 1970s, became a Solidarity chaplain in Cracow’s Nowa Huta district in the 1980s and also the founder of a number of group homes for handicapped people. Following the end of communist rule, he became an avid supporter of the renewal of the Polish Church in the post-communist period based on truth-telling about what had happened under communism, including revealing who had collaborated with the regime.

“I am only interested in the truth (Chodzi mi tylko o prawde)” —title of Father Zaleski’s latest book, published in Poland this spring, which alleges, without naming names, that there is powerful “homosexual mafia” within the Church hierarchy in Poland (and also in Rome) today

“The need for truth is more sacred than any other need.”—Simone Weil (1909-43), one of the most original, brilliant, intense, and enigmatic thinkers of the 20th century. Politically, Weil was left wing and and active in the trade union movement and the education of workers in France. After the outbreak of the Second World War and the Nazi occupation of France, Weil sought ways to be involved in the Resistance, but at risk because of her Jewish ancestry, in 1942, after a short detour in the US, she finally settled in London. Determined to share in the privations of the people she had left behind, and further weakened by overwork, and overcome by self-doubt and depression, Weil died in August 1943. She was just 34.
It is, however, as a religous thinker and mystic that Weil left her most indelible legacy. Her relationship to Christianity was vexed and complex. She finally came to regard herself as a Christian, but, so far as is known, she was never baptised. George Herbert’s poem “Love bade me welcome”, introduced to her by a young English priest in the late 1930s, struck and moved her deeply. She learned it by heart, and would often recite it to herself during periods of what she called “affliction”. For Weil the essence of faith was not credal belief but prayer in the form of attente, a “waiting” on God. God’s wholly and holy otherness, God’s kenosis in creation and in Christ, God’s compassion — and passionate and relentless honesty — were at the heart of her “theology”

“Christ likes us to prefer truth to himself, because, before being Christ, he is truth. If one turns aside from him to go towards the truth, one will not go far before falling into his arms.”—Ibid.

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A Difficult Letter

This is a complex, difficult letter to write. And I do not have enough time to do the various matters justice, so what I write here is merely a sketch.

There are a number of important things happening right now in the Church. There is the battle for religious freedom between the Church in the United States and the administration of President Barack Obama. There is the investigation by the Holy See of the American women religious orders. (Many note that the average age of the nuns in many of these orders is now approaching, or surpassing, 70; there are simply very few new vocations for most of these orders.) There is the turmoil in the Church in Ireland, rocked by allegations of harsh treatement and abuse of children, where the cardinal primate just resigned. And there is Pope Benedict’s imminent decision on whether to welcome the Society of St. Pius X, the traditional Catholic group founded by Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre, back into full reunion with the Holy See. The decision is expected before month’s end (and the Society’s reaction to that decision will then soon follow). There is no doubt that the welcoming of a group of 500 traditional priests back into full communion with Rome — and I intentionally do not go into the question of what that relationship has been up to now — is a matter of considerable importance, as these priests, and their lay congregations, would inevitably be a powerful group on behalf of a traditional Catholic position in future theological debates over the Church’s relationship to the secular world and over the interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, which is another way of saying that there will be voices in the secular media and on the “left” ready and willing to denounce the Pope harshly if he does move to “regularize” the situation of the Lefebvrists. Forewarned is forearmed.

But there are also other issues, and three in particular: first, to simplify, is the issue of “gender,” by which I mean the whole issue of human sexuality, sexual morality, the nature and role of the family, and even the demographic question — and this does not exhaust the issue; second, again to simplify, the issue of the globalized economy, and the role of human work, and of private losses placed as debts on the backs of the tax-paying public, to the point of constructing an enormously unbalanced, and unjust economy, which may require our children and grandchildren to pay off debts incurred recklessly during recent decades; third, and once again, to greatly simplify, there is the revolution occurring in genetics and genetic research, which promises to provide great benefits to humanity, to human health and well-being, but which is also fraught with the potential to bring great problems, even great evils, some of them catastrophic.

The second and third questions will have to be addressed in future reports.

But the first question is worth bringing up here, if only in passing, because traditional Church teaching is being challenged in this matter in nearly every Western country.

A Journey to Poland and Austria

We at Inside the Vatican ended our annual Easter pilgrimage on April 9, the day after Easter. (On these pilgrimages, we bring a small group of friends, generally no more than 12, to meet with Vatican officials, including cardinals, here in Rome, and to visit places like Assisi, Norcia, Subiaco, Castel Gandolfo.)

On April 9, we traveled to the village of Manoppello, Italy, where, on display in the local church is a mysterious image of the face of Christ on a small rectangle of ancient, precious, almost transparent, silk-like fabric. (Pope Benedict took the matter so seriously that he visited the shrine personally on September 1, 2006).

Upon our return to Rome, we spent the evening with Paul Badde (photo, left, with Pope Benedict XVI), author of an important book on the image, The Face of God: The Rediscovery Of The True Face of Jesus (Ignatius, 2012, cover image below), and his wife, Ellen.

Badde has made a significant contribution to the understanding of both the image in Manoppello, and the Shroud of Turin, and I think it is no exaggeration to say that the English edition of his book, just out, may mark the beginning of a new era and opportunity for scholars of the Shroud of Turin, as well as of the Holy Face of Manoppello.

I mention this image because there is no doubt that Pope Benedict has been calling ever more frequently in reason years for all of us to look “toward Christ” and, in particular, to

seek “the face of Christ.”

And I bring this up because it is this which must be at the heart of our search now, as we try to find a way forward for the Church, and the faith, in a secularized world, which is preaching a new anthropology, a new future for humanity, and, in a sense, a new “face” for the “messiah” of our age, a “face” without a transcendent dimension, a face which can be designed, and produced, by the new “gods” of our age, who are, as in the time of the Caesars, only men.

After the Easter pilgrimage, and the interesting visit with Badde and his wife, I went to Poland, and then to Austria.

In Cracow, I met with Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz (photo left), formerly, and throughout his entire pontificate (1978-2005), the personal secretary of Pope John Paul II, and also with Father Tadeusz-Isakowicz Zaleski, the priest who was silenced in 2006 by Cardinal Dziwisz because he discovered the names of 39 Polish clerics who collaborated with the Communist regime.

 

 

(Here is a photo of Zaleski as a young priest in the days of Solidarnosc.)

I also had the chance to visit the Shrine of Divine Mercy, where St. Faustina Kowalska lived, and the Shrine of the Black Madonna at Czestochowa, not far from Cracow.

(The image below is of the Czestochowa shrine, but not from my visit.)

I was deeply moved by the piety I saw at this latter shrine. A German priest was celebrating Mass directly in front of the venerated icon for a group of German Catholics. Throughout the Mass, quietly, reverently, people, Germans and Poles alike, moved with tiny sliding motions on their knees along a marble pathway made smooth by countless legs, and then, having left the chapel, wrote down their special petitions to Our Lady and dropped the writings into little slots at the back of the church.

I asked that I might find some way to write more clearly and effectively, and to serve to build up, and not to tear down, to bring healing, not throw salt into wounds, to bring hope, not hopelessness, to bring understanding, and compassion, and peace, not confusion and condemnation and conflict.

All writing springs from a desire to communicate, to share, and so does this writing. One seeks the right words in order to send thoughts, images, insights, to a reader, a hearer, a receiver. One seeks to send news, bare facts, but also to send a context for that news, a way of understanding it, even by telling a story (or a parable) so that the words can be digested, integrated into a complete, balanced, worldview. One seeks to do this — so one tells oneself — because one wishes to serve truth, to serve understanding, to serve reason (that is, the Logos, that is, Christ, “the anointed one”), to the exclusion of all ideologies and all false gods.

And one can hesitate, before writing, or before finishing writing, and clicking on the “Send” button, because one senses, with unease, and with a certain sorrow, which cannot be easily set aside, that one has not given sufficient context, that what one sends will not serve to build up truth in charity, but only to burden souls with “news” that cannot be assimilated, that cannot nourish.

“Truth-telling” Pros and Cons

In 2006, Cardinal Dziwisz had just returned to Poland after a quarter century in Rome to become the archbishop of Cracow.

One of the decisions he took was to forbid a priest — Zaleski — from revealing information on clerics who had cooperated with the Communist secret services during the years when the Soviet Union controlled Eastern Europe.

Zaleski, a Solidarity priest, had been beaten up twice in 1985 by Polish secret police. These attacks came in the wake of the notorious murder of fellow Solidarity priest Jerzy Popieluszko in 1984.

By the late 1980s, Zaleski had decided to devote his life to a work of Christian charity: to helping mentally handicapped people, who were virtually abandoned under the communist regime. Zelski launched a Foundation and began to raise funds to create centers for the care of mentally handicapped people throughout Poland. Today, he has 30 such centers around Poland, caring for hundreds of handicapped men and women.

In about 2005, a friend of his came to him and said, “Father Tadeusz, there is a dossier also on you in the Secret Police files.”

“Really?” Father Radeusz replied. He had not known of it.

“Yes,” his friend told him. “Would you like to see it?”

Zaleski said he would. He soon received permission to have access to his own secret file. He expected to find only a page or two. He found more than 500 pages, and a video of one of his two beatings.

“I was shocked at the size of my file,” he told me.

He realized that some of his actions and movements had been followed by people close to him — by collaborators of the regime who were inside the Church. But who were those collaborators? Zaleski decided to find out, with devastating consequences…

The Warsaw Business Journal on June 5, 2006, wrote the following:

“(Konrad Stanislaw) Hejmo, (Michal) Czajkowski, (Mieczyslaw) Malinski — in the last year, three priests’ names have already made it into the headlines, as they were all suspected of cooperating with communist secret services (SB, Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, the Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs). Fathers Hejmo and Maliński were close to the late Pope John Paul II, while Father Czajkowski was accused of informing on Father Jerzy Popieluszko — a legend of the Solidarity movement who was murdered by the SB.

“Last week, Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski, who was conducting research on SB agents in the church in Kraków, called a press conference to reveal information he came across while looking through the archives of the National Remembrance Institute (IPN). He claimed to know the names of 28 SB collaborators within the Kraków church, eight of whom are already dead.

“A couple of hours before the meeting with journalists, Father Zaleski was summoned to the curia and handed a letter from Cardinal Dziwisz, which forbade him from talking to the press about his findings or continuing his research. ‘As the illegal sullying of somebody’s good name is a crime and by announcing that you are going to reveal the names of clerics suspected of collaboration with SB, you have come very close to committing one. I hereby give you a canonic reprimand pursuant to the relevant regulations,’ Dziwisz wrote.

“Father Zaleski, a famous priest within the Solidarity movement in Nowa Huta, told the journalists: ‘I accept this decision in the spirit of obedience towards Kraków’s archbishop,’ but later added: ‘I have a moral right to talk about my generation. It is the generation of people who in the 1980s stayed in Poland, survived the times of Solidarity and martial law.’ This was a clear allusion to Cardinal Dziwisz, who lived in Vatican between 1978 and 2005.”

But within a few weeks, Zaleski published the results of his research.

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Communist Collaboration in Poland

Many historians argue that a significant segment of the clergy in Poland and other Eastern bloc countries collaborated to varying degrees with the Communist secret services.

The Polish Church publicly apologized in 2006 for priests who collaborated with the SB, but has tried to keep their names secret.

Most researchers who have delved into the archives of the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa (Security Service of the Ministry of Internal Affairs) estimate that thousands of the country’s priests, monks and nuns at the time — as many as 10% of the total — collaborated with the secret police to some degree.

The Archbishop of Warsaw, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, told an Italian news agency in 2006 that the overall percentage was 15%. The percentage was likely to have been much higher in major cities and university towns, some historians say, where surveillance was heavier.

When Father Zaleski decided to begin publishing disclosures in May 2006, Cardinal Dziwisz forbade him to do so or to speak to the press because it would undermine “love for the Church and Christ.” The cardinal issued an order prohibiting any member of the clergy from delving into Krakow’s secret police archives without his authorization.

Still, Father Zaleski published a book identifying 39 priests whose names he found in Krakow’s secret police files, three now bishops in the Polish Church.

The name for the collaborators was TWs (= Tajny wspolpracownik) “secret collaborator.” Father Zaleski found the 39 priests identified as “TWs”; four of them became bishops. Of the 39, 22 answered Zaleski’s request for comment, the majority denying that they were collaborators, and 4 admitted that they were. One, the Rev. Janusz Bielanski, resigned as rector of Wawel Cathedral in Cracow on January 8, 2007, citing the allegations.

In May 2006, the Rev. Michal Czajkowski, co-president of Poland’s Council of Christians and Jews, was accused of having spied for the secret police for 24 years. He resigned his posts and issued an apology.

Rev. Mieczyslaw Malinski, who had been close to John Paul II, worked for the SB in the 1980s. Malinski admitted having had contacts with the secret police but denied that he was a spy.

Rev. Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo, a Dominican priest posted to the Vatican, passed information to the secret service’s antichurch branch. Hejmo admitted giving the information but denied that he was a spy.

Pope Benedict picked Stanislaw W. Wielgus in early December 2006 to succeed Cardinal Glemp as Archbishop of Warsaw. A Polish daily newspaper, Gazeta Polska, reported December 20, 2006, that the bishop had spied on dissidents and fellow clerics from 1978 when he signed the cooperation agreement with the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa (Security Service, SB), until Communism collapsed in 1989. In fact, Wielgus was recruited by the SB in 1967 when he was a philosophy student at the University of Lublin in eastern Poland, more than a decade before he signed the cooperation agreement. Archbishop Wielgus admitted that he had collaborated with the SB, on January 5, 2007. “By the fact of this entanglement, I have damaged the Church,” he said. He abruptly resigned at a Mass meant to celebrate his new position January 7, 2007. “A roar of shock arose from the crowd inside the cathedral and stunned many people watching the proceedings live on television,” the New York Times wrote on January 8, 2007. “The Vatican had announced the resignation a half hour earlier, though few had heard the news…. Outside the cathedral, scuffles erupted between supporters and detractors of the bishop among the hundreds of Catholics gathered beneath umbrellas in the rain. Some of his supporters shouted that ‘Jews’ were trying to destroy the Church. Anti-Semitism, long present in Poland, is a particular problem within some conservative branches of the Polish Catholic church.”

(Here is a link to the site that contains the information in the paragraphs above: https://www.eurekaencyclopedia.com/index.php/Category:Communist_Collaboration

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Meeting Zaleski

It was a long and winding road to reach Father Zaleski. He lives on the outskirts of Cracow, in a residential complex set up to provide living, eating, studying and recreation facilities for dozens of mentally retarded men and women.

At my first glimpse of Zaleski, I was struck by his smile. It was broad and warm. He said he had a few minutes to talk, and offered a drink of tea. When ten minutes became an hour, he suggested we retire to the dining facility, and we dined on the same food as the rest of the community.

Now, the odd thing about our conversation was that it had little to deal with the communist past, and much to deal with the present situation of the Church.

“I have just been to see Cardinal Dsiwisz,” Zaleski told me. “We met three days ago.”

“You were just with him?” I asked.

“Yes,” Zaleski told me. “And we have come to a new understanding. That is very gratifying to me.

“He agreed to allow me to give a presentation to diocesan officials. I think he thought I would not influence anyone. And I gave a presentation. In the end, a majority supported me, especially among the younger priests.”

“What was your presentation about?” I asked.

“The present situation of the Church in Poland,” Zaleski said. “The situation is grave because there are individuals, and not only in Poland, but also in Rome, and in the United States, who are part of a homosexual mafia which wishes to impede the careers of anyone who is not part of this group.”

Here is a link to a recent article about Zaleski’s claims: https://www.thenews.pl/1/9/Artykul/93469,‘Gay-mafia-in-Polish-Church-claims-controversial-priest

This is the text of the article:

“Gay mafia” in Polish Church, claims controversial priest

March 16, 2012

A controversial priest and Solidarity veteran has claimed that the Church in Poland is compromised by a “gay mafia” which “can destroy anyone” in its path.

“The gay lobby in the Church can destroy anyone who gets in its way,” claims Father Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski in his latest book, ‘I am only interested in the truth’ (Chodzi mi tylko o prawde).

The priest is not new to controversy, having caused a storm in 2006 by publishing research which alleged collaboration of priests with the communist-era security services.

In his latest volume, which takes the form of an interview with the editor of the conservative, right wing journal Fronda, the priest claims that Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, Archbishop of Krakow, had specifically requested him to avoid homosexual references in the earlier book about communist collaboration.

When asked in the current publication whether “homosexuality is a problem in the clergy”, the priest replied that “the higher up you go, the worse it gets.”
He also claimed knowledge of one curia where “from the bishop down to the butler, everyone working there is of such a tendency.”

Isakowicz-Zaleski argued that “it cannot be so that someone receives an important position solely because of his homosexuality.”

He also claimed that during his research into the communist-era files, he discovered a custom whereby clergymen were sent to Rome when the Curia “was unable to cope with the homosexuality of a priest.”

Isakowicz-Zaleski added that “homosexual circles have always had a strong influence at the Vatican.”

The priest, who runs a charitable foundation near Krakow, is descended from a prominent Polish-Armenian family and is a figurehead for the Armenian Catholic Church in Poland.

“Super agent”

When researching his 2006 book, Isakowicz-Zaleski says that after he found evidence of widespread collaboration by priests with the communist authorities, he was told by the Krakow archdiocese to “throw the material in the incinerator”.

When he persisted with the research, Krakow’s Cardinal Dziwisz – a longtime aid to John Paul II — condemned his “irresponsible and harmful” activities, warned him to stop “throwing accusations” and banned him from speaking to the media.

Poland’s then Roman Catholic primate, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, accused Isakowicz-Zaleski of behaving like a “super agent” himself, who pursued priests in a one-man witch hunt. (pg/nh)

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How Others View Zaleski’s Accusations

Zaleski’s accusations have been, for the most part, downplayed. He is often characterized as “reckless” in making unsubstantiated charges.

What seems to be Zaleski’s main source, the communist state police archives, may contain false allegations, these critics say.

For example, the communist authorities may have wished to destroy someone by labeling him as a homosexual when that person was not, in fact, a homosexual. In other words, Zaleski often can’t be sure of his allegations because his sources may be unreliable, even intentionally misleading. In this sense, his critics argue, Zaleski may be falling into a trap, and damaging the Church by spreading and giving credence to these police reports.

For example, the website “VaticanInsider” recently ran a story on Zaleski and his claims by Marek Lehnert, a Polish journalist who has worked in Rome for many years. The essence of the “line” in Lehnert’s report is that “the evidence… does not seem watertight.”

Here is a link to Lehnert’s story: https://vaticaninsider.lastampa.it/en/homepage/the-vatican/detail/articolo/polonia-poland-14114/

And here is the text of the article:

“A gay lobby is controlling careers in the Vatican”

April 4, 2012

This is the theory put forward in a new book by Polish priest Fr. Zaleski. But no names are mentioned in the work and the “evidence” provided by the Polish communist secret police does not seem watertight

By MAREK LEHNERT, ROME

“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free”: in recent days Fr. Tadeusz Isakowicz Zaleski has been continuously repeating these words from the Gospel of St. John (8:32). The chorus has not stopped since the publication of his new book “I care about the truth.” In this long interview, the priest, who during communist times was known for his unconditional support of Solidarnośc and is now known for the unusual investigative spirit with which he sifts through documents kept in the National Memory Institute (IPN), reveals — amongst other things — the existence of a so-called “gay lobby”. Both on a national and Vatican level.

Isakowicz Zaleski, however, launches accusations and then shies away: aside from the case of Mgr. Juliusz Paetz, who was forced to resign from his position as Archbishop of Poznan by John Paul II after being accused of molesting his seminarians, no other name is mentioned in the book. “Given the controversy surrounding my accusations, I will only reveal the names before the relevant commission which the Polish Church decides to establish,” the priest said.

This is a strange attitude coming from a person who claims he is certain that his readers are well aware of what and about whom he is talking about. “These things are universally known,” Isakowicz Zaleski retorted. “I demonstrate that one of the problems of the Polish Church today is the lack of transparency with regard to certain questions,” he added.

He believes enemies of the Church take advantage of the situation. This was the case when the identities of clerics who collaborated with the Polish secret police were revealed during the communist regime. And it is still the case today, in relation to homosexuality, which according to him is “omnipresent”. There are dioceses, Fr. Tadeusz wrote, in which everyone has such tendencies, from ordinary bishops to housekeepers. But no names are given; everyone knows who they are anyway. It is the same in the Vatican — because “the situation worsens the higher up you go” — where there is a strong gay lobby that guarantees the careers of its members, the author says.

The Polish Catholic Church, at least the hierarchy, is in no hurry to discuss things with Isakowicz Zaleski and take his revelations into account (thus fuelling the scepticism of the press which wants names). The only voice raised on the subject is that of Fr. Józef Augustyn, a Jesuit who for years has been willing and able to publicly discuss some of the most burning questions regarding the sexual conduct of the laity and the clergy.

According to the Jesuit, the problem of homosexuality in the clergy does indeed exist, but Fr. Isakowicz Zaleski has exposed it “in an ambiguous and superficial way.” The crux of the issue, he says, is not the phenomenon itself “which we have little power to influence, but our attitude towards it.”

The theory put forward in the book about the esistence of “a powerful sexual conspiracy within the Church,” does not hold water in the face of questions that spontaneously spring up. The author bases his theory on Polish secret police documents but the Polish Jesuit asks himself whether this is a reliable source. The more serious the accusations, the stronger the evidence needs to be, Fr. Augustyn added, saying that he could not find any such evidence in the book. All it presents are insinuations and fallacies. Not to mention the “dangerous generalisations”, for example, the section on the Vatican. The truth which Isakowicz Zaleski seems so fond of is not only to be found in information: it should also lie in the reasons that pushed someone to supply this “news”, the Jesuit concludes in the interview with Polish Catholic news agency KAI.

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I asked Zaleski if he had any doubts about his allegations.

“Are you sure you are not making exaggerated or false accusations?” I asked him. “Where do you get your information? Are you sure it is reliable?”

Zaleski told me he bases his accusations on emails and written reports and letters he has received from priests and lay people all over Poland, as well as from Rome — where he studied 20 years ago — and from the United States.

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Zeleski was born in Cracow on September 7, 1956; he is now 56. He is both Roman Catholic and Armenian Catholic. He was ordained in 1983.

On May 3, 2006, he was awarded the Commander’s Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of Poland’s highest Orders, and in 2007, he was awarded the Order of the Smile and Polish Ombudsmans Order of Paweł Włodkowic.

In 1988, as a priest of the workers, he participated in the strike in Nowa Huta’s Lenin Steel Mill. At the same time, he began helping the poor and the handicapped, together with nuns from local convents. In 1987, he co-founded charitable Foundation of Brother Albert Chmielowski. Currently, he is director of the Foundation, which owns a shelter in the village of Radwanowice in the suburbs of Cracow.

He lost several members of his family in a campaign of ethnic cleansing of Poles in modern Western Ukraine (formerly inside pre-1939 eastern Polish territory), has for years been fighting to commemorate the Polish victims. In 2008 he unsuccessfully appealed to the Government of Poland, stating that it should officially condemn the Volhynian Genocide. He stated that political correctness in Poland makes it impossible to mention these tragic events. He frequently criticizes not only members of the Polish Government, together with president Kaczynski, but also Roman Catholic hierarchy, such as Primate Jozef Glemp and Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, claiming that they have neglected sufferings of Poles in Western Ukraine and they do not protest when Ukrainian nationalists are awarded orders.

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Before leaving Zaleski, I asked him how he felt about living and working for 25 years with mentally handicapped people. “Is it a heavy duty for you?” I asked. “Do you find it burdensome?”

“It is better than life in most other places in our society,” Zaleski said. “In the curia, certainly. You know, here someone says to me, ‘I love you,’ and he is telling the truth. He does love me. And here someone says ‘I hate you!’ and he is also telling the truth. He does hate me! There are no lies here. There is no deceit. I like living without lies and deceit. I like living with these people, whom the world calls ‘retarded.’ I think they are far advanced beyind most of us. They live a life in the light, in truth.”

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I left Zaleski not sure what to make of him. Surely he is a feisty personality. Surely he is a fighter, as he proved in the days of the struggle against communism. And surely he loves Christ and his Church, especially the “little ones,” as his lifetime of work with the mentally handicapped clearly shows. But is he right in his allegations? Has he discovered the truth, or has he spread false reports?

With this question in my mind, I set out south for Vienna, where another case has arisen arousing much controversy and debate, involving an old friend, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn — a case that just today led the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to write to Schoenborn asking him to explain what has happened in his diocese…

(to be continued)

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