POLAND
National Catholic Reporter

Jan. 13, 2012
By Jonathan Luxmoore

WARSAW, POLAND — When Bartek Obloj, a 13-year-old altar boy, hanged himself in his home village of Hludno just before Christmas 2007, he left a letter to his mother complaining of being molested by his parish rector. Police were called and his shocked parents blamed the priest for their son’s death.

A month later, Poland’s Catholic Tygodnik Powszechny weekly reported that Fr. Stanislaw Kaszowski had been moved to a parish 20 miles away after personally saying the boy’s funeral Mass. He’d denied the accusations, the paper added, and defiantly failed to appear at a court hearing.

Hludno’s mayor, Stanislaw Gladysz, testified that locals had long complained of the priest’s “sadistic behavior” and “sexual exploits,” adding that for a decade he’d asked the local ordinary, Archbishop Jozef Michalik of Przemysl, to move the priest. However, Michalik, president of the…