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| image taken from - Documentary on child sex abuse by Catholic priests stirs debate in Poland |
The independent documentary movie by Tomasz and Marek Sekielski brothers.
This is truth about the Catholic Church in Poland.
The movie was fully funded by viewers via the Patronite.pl platform.
“Why do priests commit such crimes? Why did the bishops not react as they should? Why, for years, did a conspiracy of silence prevail among the clergy?” journalist Andrzej Gajcy asked Monday on the news site Onet, voicing some of the uncomfortable questions confronting many Poles.
The primate of Poland has thanked the brothers who made the film, Tomasz and Marek Sekielski, for their “courage.”
“I apologize for every wound inflicted by the people of the church,” Archbishop Wojciech Polak said Saturday.
The Vatican’s ambassador to Poland, Archbishop Salvatore Pennacchio, also expressed sympathy for abuse survivors on behalf of both himself and Pope Francis.
“The pope is very concerned and we express sympathy and solidarity,” Pennacchio said.
Among others in the Polish church, the reactions were mixed. The archbishop of Gdansk, Leszek Slawoj Glodz, said he has better things to do than watch the film.
The Rev. Jacek Prusak, a Jesuit priest, called the church “a home for a herd of wolves in clerical collars” that would face judgment.
Most Poles identify as Catholic and have a powerful attachment to the church. They credit the Catholic Church with keeping their country’s language and culture alive during more than a century of foreign rule.
The late Polish pope John Paul II, who was made a saint, is revered both as a moral authority and for his opposition to communism.
But like many other countries, Poland has had to reckon recently with revelations about clergy who molested children. In March, Polish church authorities said they had recorded cases of 382 clergymen who abused 625 victims under the age of 18 since 1990.
The documentary presents new evidence that priests who were known to be pedophiles were transferred between parishes instead of pushed out of the church or referred to police.
One is the late Rev. Franciszek Cybula, who in 1980-1985 was the priest of a shipyard technician named Lech Walesa who founded Poland’s anti-communist Solidarity movement and became president after communism fell.
“I am so surprised that I do not know what to say,” Walesa said. “If I, as a Catholic, had known, would I allow such a thing? No way.”
The film opens with a 39-year-old woman, Anna Misiewicz, returning to a parish in Topola, a village near Krakow, to confront an elderly priest who molested her when she was about 7-years-old.
Fearful and wearing a hidden camera, Misiewicz tells the priest how his abuse still keeps her from sleeping at night. When she reminds him he had kissed her and used her hands to masturbate, the priest admits his wrongdoing with her and other girls." - READ the whole Article HERE.
The 121 minute long film is an independent production of Tomasz and Marek Sekielski, and was fully financed by Internet fundraising in a Polish "Patronite" service. The first of the brothers is an author of the script and director, the second is a producer. Adam Galica, Wojciech Jakubczak and Piotr Susin were responsible for videography, and Dariusz Mandes was an editor.
The film addresses the issue of responsibility of the Episcopal Conference of Poland for hiding pedophiles among priests from the law enforcement. It portrayed both new and old cases of the crimes. Accusations of pedophilia against Franciszek Cybula, the personal chaplain of the former President of Poland Lech Wałęsa and Eugeniusz Makulski, who took the initiative of building the Basilica of Our Lady of Licheń,were raised for the first time.
The authors invited several church dignitaries to participate, but the archbishops Wojciech Polak and Stanisław Gądecki refused and the cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, archbishop Sławoj Leszek Głódź and bishop Jan Tyrawa did not respond to the invitation. - MORE...
