POLAND
Vatican Insider
The presentation of a report on Church finances is just days away but the Country has not yet unravelled the nub of the financing issue
Marek Lehnert
Rome
Even though for fourteen years Poland has had an agreement that is almost identical to the one Italy had in 1984, it has not yet unravelled the issue of funding for the Catholic Church operating on the Country. Until yesterday, both State and Church utilized legal tools dating back to the People’s Republic whose memory would be best forgotten. Firstly the Ecclesiastical Fund (Fundusz kościelny) formed in 1950, in theory to help the so-called patriot-priests, but in practice to finance the opposition to the Church and its employees, guilty of being faithful to the Pope and the Vatican. The high clerics themselves have highlighted this when solicited by the notice given by the second government led by Tusk, according to which it’s time to review the relations between State and Church.
In his keynote speech to the Sejm (lower house) on the last 18 November, the Prime Minister announced his intention to include priests in the national pension scheme. It would therefore be safe to presume that the ecclesiastical fund will be fully dismantled. If necessary, said Tusk “we are ready to change the agreement.” As a first reaction to the news, the Church representatives, aside from requesting to have a say in the proposed changes, admitted to the necessity of creating a “new, global model to fund the Church.” The current fund was deemed “anachronistic” and its balance for years has reportedly been ‘difficult to calculate’.
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