The goals and lies of the Polish Left’s smear campaign against John Paul II
“A half-truth is worse than a lie and a half.”
This Yiddish proverb perfectly describes the dishonest claims that the future Pope St. John Paul II covered up sexual abuse as Archbishop of Krakow (1962-1978), recently made by Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek and the American-owned private Polish news station TVN24. Polish historians have unanimously rejected these accusations as based on manipulative and selective readings of archival evidence, while Polish society has overwhelmingly rallied to the late pope’s defense.
The Polish Left’s priorities
The ideological left in today’s Poland has two main objectives, one short-term and the other long-term. The former is to oust the socially conservative Law and Justice party, which has ruled the country since 2015, out of power. In the long term, meanwhile, the Polish left dreams of creating a social revolution like that implemented by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in Spain in the 2000s, with legal abortion on demand, same sex “marriage,” and state policies guided by the LGBT and gender ideologies.
Of course, the Polish left is concerned about climate change, animal rights, refugees, and other issues dear to its ideological counterparts in North America and Western Europe. But even a cursory reading of the Polish left-liberal media and the pronouncements of progressive Polish politicians reveals an obsession with social and sexual issues.
Naturally, the primary obstacle to achieving these goals is the Catholic Church. Whereas the Church in Spain enjoyed close relations with the oppressive dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975), the Catholic Church was the primary defender of Polish identity and independence during the past two centuries, most of which the Poles spent under foreign domination. The great Polish artists of the nineteenth century whose work was filled with patriotic fervor – the composer Frederic Chopin, the novelist Henryk Sienkiewicz, the poet Adam Mickiewicz – all found spiritual refuge in the Church.
During World War II, more than a fifth of Polish clergy were killed; of the hundreds of priests murdered in the Dachau concentration camp, more than eighty percent were Poles. Under communist rule (1944-1989), meanwhile, the Church’s moral position grew. Blessed Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński, primate of Poland from 1948 until his death in 1981, constantly defended the Polish nation, which led him to be imprisoned for three years. Many outspoken Polish priests, like Blessed Jerzy Popiełuszko, were given the palm of martyrdom.
Many Poles consider Pope St. John Paul II to be their greatest son. Thousands of streets, squares, and schools across Poland bear his name. There is consensus among historians that St. John Paul II played a crucial role in the peaceful collapse of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe. As renowned Cold War historian John Lewis Gaddis has written: “When Pope John Paul II kissed the ground at the Warsaw airport, he began the process by which communism in Poland – and ultimately elsewhere in Europe – would come to an end.”
