ROME (AP) - Priests working in the Vatican for Poland's secret services during the Communist era extensively spied on Pope John Paul II, a Polish cardinal was quoted as saying Tuesday. Jozef Cardinal Glemp, the primate of Poland, was quoted by Italian news agency ANSA as saying John Paul was monitored on orders from Moscow by clergymen who collaborated with the feared security forces who kept tabs on Poles' daily lives under the Communists.
John Paul was "spied on, and how," Glemp said on the sidelines of an interfaith meeting in Assisi in quotes confirmed by the conference's organizers. "In the Vatican there were spies. Moscow had every interest in knowing what was going on in Rome with a Polish pope" in office.
John Paul's staunch opposition to communism, is credited with inspiring the rise in the 1980s of Poland's pro-democracy Solidarity movement, which helped end Communist rule in 1989.
Glemp said the climate of fear under which Poles lived meant that some priests collaborated with authorities.
Documents show that about 15 per cent of Poland's clergy gave information to the secret services, Glemp said. "But the majority of the clergy, 85 per cent, resisted."
Allegations have circulated for decades that the Kremlin, fearing the Polish pontiff threatened the stability of the Soviet bloc, placed spies on John Paul and even ordered the 1981 attempt on his life by a Turkish gunman.
Leon Kieres, head of the Institute of National Remembrance, a Polish state body that investigates Communist-era crimes, said in an interview last year that the secret police reported on the future John Paul II, Karol Wojtyla, as early as 1946, when he was ordained.
Documents that have surfaced recently raised allegations against some prominent church figures, including Rev. Stanislaw Hejmo, a friar who ministered to Polish pilgrims who travelled to the Vatican to meet John Paul, and Rev. Michal Czajkowski, a popular priest who recently co-chaired the Polish Council of Christians and Jews.
Hejmo has denied ever collaborating consciously, and apologized to anyone he might have hurt. Czajkowski acknowledged in July that he had spied on behalf of the Communist-era secret police, and asked for forgiveness.
