Apology over Polish paedophile scandal

Representatives of the Polish Catholic Church have apologised for the alleged child sex abuse by Archbishop Józef Wesolowski, a 65-year-old Pole who served as papal envoy in the Dominican Republic, and his 38-year-old Polish colleague Fr Wojciech Gil, writes Josef Pazderka.

According to prosecutors in the Dominican Republic the two men abused several young boys while serving on the Caribbean island. “Trust in the Church is waning. We are sorry. This is the least we can do,” said Bishop Wojciech Polak, a senior official with the Polish Catholic Bishops’ Conference.
Polish church representatives added they were unaware of the whereabouts of both men as prosecutors in Warsaw launched a separate criminal investigation against them.

“The scale of paedophilia in the Church in Poland is unknown,” said a Jesuit priest, Fr Adam Zak, responsible for child and youth welfare in the Polish episcopate. “The cases that end up in court are just the tip of the iceberg,” he said, pointing to 27 priests convicted of child sex abuse in Poland over the last decade.