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TRANSCRIPT
A team of Polish journalists in the United States is investigating American ties to compromised members of the Polish hierarchy. In their crosshairs is Cdl. Stanislaw Dziwisz, Poland’s highest-ranking prelate, who is well connected with powerful U.S. clergy — clerics like disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick and Detroit’s Miroslaw Krol, chancellor of a local seminary for Polish nationals.
Dziwisz was St. John Paul II’s personal secretary. Artur Nowak, a petitioner for victims of pedophilia, described Dziwisz’s role: “He’s a person for whom John Paul II had a personal weakness, in no pejorative sense. It so happened that when the pope’s health deteriorated from Parkinson’s disease, he became his main gatekeeper.”
Of greatest importance to Polish media is Dziwisz’s history of covering up sex abuse while archbishop of Krakow. In interviews, Dziwisz was always dodging the questions, saying, “I wasn’t involved,” “I knew nothing,” “I didn’t know,” or “I never heard anything of that sort.”
For months, Dziwisz stonewalled attempts to be interviewed by Warsaw investigative journalist Marcin Gutowski. Just before the McCarrick Report was published in November 2020, Gutowski’s 90-minute documentary, Don Stanislao, was aired on Polish television.
Chief among concerns raised in the documentary was the allegation that Krakow’s former archbishop ignored credible cases of child sexual abuse. The report generated such a ratings spike the station decided to fund further investigation, this time sending the team of journalists to America.
The spike in ratings may also have influenced the Polish State Commission on Pedophilia. Earlier this month, the commission referred four Polish bishops to prosecutors. Among them was Dziwisz.
The cardinal visited Detroit’s Orchard Lake Schools on several occasions and figures prominently in the institution’s recent promotional video. Polish journalists in Detroit last week told Church Militant that Orchard Lake officials refused to answer any questions but instead immediately called local police to have them removed from campus. But the search for truth and justice will continue.
— Campaign 32075 —
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