A newly released clerical sexual abuse report in Poland’s Sosnowiec Diocese is being described by investigators as a necessary step toward accountability, while Church leaders call it a painful but essential moment in rebuilding trust after years of scandals. Source: NCR Online.
The partial report, published on February 12 by the independent commission Explanation and Repair, documents at least 50 identified victims of sexual abuse of minors and highlights systemic failures in how allegations were handled over decades.
The report found that approximately 3.2 per cent of almost 600 priests incardinated into the diocese since its founding in 1992, were involved in abusive behaviours, with some cases of abuse committed by Sosnowiec’s priests before the establishment of the diocese.
Sosnowiec Bishop Artur Wazny framed the publication of the partial report as a moment of “deep pain”, “shame” and “necessary purification”.
“The report is not an act of accusation nor a defence strategy. It is a painful confession of faith that only truth – even the most difficult truth, hidden under layers of dust in disordered archives – can set us free,” the bishop said.
“In the centre of this report are not the names of perpetrators, but the pain of the harmed and their loved ones,” he said, mentioning that “66 per cent of those harmed are girls and 96 per cent are under 15 years of age.”
These are “concrete human fates, fractured biographies, ruined childhoods and shaken trust in God”, Bishop Wazny said.
“For years, the Church system, instead of protecting you, often protected itself,” he said, speaking directly to victim-survivors. “I apologise for every moment when the Church, instead of being a home, became for you a place of darkness,” Bishop Wazny said, promising to “try to heal these wounds with you.”
The Sosnowiec Diocese, created in southern Poland’s industrial Silesia region in 1992, has faced a series of clergy misconduct controversies in recent years that drew international attention and added to an already shattered reputation of the Church in the country.
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Commission issues ‘painful’ abuse report on Polish diocese, a first in the crisis-hit nation (By Katarzyna Szalajko, OSV News via NCR Online)
