Sex offenders keep their jobs in some parishes in Poland, with congregations’ blessings
WEGROW, Poland—One Sunday morning last year, the Rev. Jacek Wentczuk stood before his congregation and made a startling admission. He was a convicted sex offender, he said, found guilty in 2012 of molesting a 15-year-old girl in a nearby town. His bishop was considering transferring him.
Parishioners rallied to the side of the popular Catholic priest, who insisted he had done nothing wrong. They brought flowers and children’s drawings to persuade church leaders to keep Father Wentczuk in his job in this small town in eastern Poland, where he is known for ministering to the sick and dying.
“We gave him a chance,” said Monika Landzberg, a doctor at the local hospital. “This crime cannot weigh on a man until the end of his life.” Father Wentczuk didn’t respond to requests for comment.
There are deep splits in the world-wide Catholic Church over how to handle cases of sexual abuse involving priests, with some clergy and laity arguing that any member of the clergy who sexually abuses a minor should be removed from ministry. Others call for a more flexible, lenient response.
In the U.S., the church has adopted a zero-tolerance approach. Church leaders in Australia, Canada, Ireland and elsewhere also have moved aggressively against clergy who transgress.
But in many other places, including Poland, a less-strict standard prevails. The faithful often defend accused priests. And church leaders can be reluctant to punish abusers.
“You have to exonerate the human being,” said the Rev. Bogdan Jaworowski, a priest in southeastern Poland whose congregation rallied behind a colleague convicted of distributing child pornography.
At the start of a Vatican conference on sex abuse on Thursday, Pope Francis said priests’ preying on children was a plague on the church. He called on bishops to devise “not simple and predictable condemnations but concrete and effective measures” to stamp out misconduct.
Victims and anti-abuse activists will hold a “March to Zero” in Rome on Saturday, urging the pope to institute a world-wide zero-tolerance policy for abusers.
In a discussion guide for summit participants, Pope Francis wrote about clergy who commit abuse having to give up public ministry, but also emphasized the “traditional principle of proportionality of punishment.”
Since America’s sex-abuse scandals erupted in 2002 in Boston, the church in the U.S. has moved to remove any priest found guilty of sexual abuse of someone under the age of 18 from ministry, either by dismissal from the priesthood—“defrocking”—or restriction to a private life of “prayer and penance.”
The church in the U.S. requires bishops to inform police of suspected abuse and cooperate with investigations.
The American rules “do not always transport or travel well,” said the Vatican’s top sex-abuse prosecutor, the Rev. Robert Geisinger, in a rare 2017 public statement of the Vatican’s thinking
on disciplinary policy. “Cultural sensitivity is needed in understanding how abuse is understood.”
Of the 20 countries with the world’s largest Catholic populations, including Poland, only the
U.S. church has a “zero tolerance” policy, according to Anne Barrett Doyle of BishopAccountability.org, a U.S. organization that tracks abuse cases and supports zero tolerance.
In Italy, the national bishops’ conference decided in 2014 against requiring bishops to report abuse to civil authorities. Students and teachers in Spain have formed human chains to protest on behalf of accused clerical sex offenders, and Italian Catholics have demonstrated for their own.
In Poland, at least nine Catholic clergymen convicted of child sex abuse-related crimes continue to offer Mass, according to court and church records reviewed by The Wall Street Journal and interviews with church officials.
A Krakow priest, the Rev. Lukasz Kubas, molested a 12-year-old girl, according to his 2010 court verdict, but still regularly celebrates Mass. Another, the Rev. Andrzej Seidler, who ministers to a town in Poland’s southeast, was sentenced to two years probation for molesting a 13-year-old girl. Neither responded to requests for comment.
In one case, the Rev. Roman Jurczak was convicted of the sexual abuse of a girl younger than 15, and spent four months in prison. He celebrates Mass weekly at a church in southern Poland, a local church official said.
Father Jurczak didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a 2016 statement, the local bishop said the accusations “have never been repeated…. The media have destroyed his good name.”
In some cases, parishioners have thronged courtrooms, thumbing rosaries, to show their support for accused priests.
“In the 70s and 80s, this topic was like a taboo,” said Boleslaw Senyszyn, a judge under Communism and now a lawyer for sex-abuse victims. Even today, “many lawyers feel afraid to take these cases against the church. It’s the reaction from the society.”
Polish church officials referred requests for comment to local dioceses, several of which said they hadn’t broken Polish church rules in allowing convicted sex offenders to remain in the ministry.
In 2007, in the village of Sarnaki, about an hour from Wegrow, Father Wentczuk began his abuse of Ernesta Miłkowska, then 15, as her parents moved toward divorce, after he recruited her for a play about the life of St. John Paul II, according to the court verdict. Ms. Milkowska confirmed this account to the Journal.
For three months they met regularly late in the evening in his apartment, the verdict said. Neighbors including another priest began to notice and in July 2007 her mother, Marta Miłkowska, reported her suspicions—first to the bishop and then to police and prosecutors. A fellow priest testified against Father Wentczuk during a subsequent trial.
Father Wentczuk was found guilty by a local court of molestation in 2012. “The accused was perfectly aware of the fact that he as a priest and educated person, enjoys within the society, especially a village, huge trust and respect and used that fact in order to get closer to the victim without raising suspicion,” the judgment reads. “He used her to gratify his sexual needs.”
The church defrocked him, but he appealed and the Vatican reversed the ruling. “Because of this, the bishop of the diocese was free to appoint the priest to new assignments,” the Wegrow diocese said in statement to the Journal.
Classmates stopped talking to Ms. Milkowska, other priests blamed her, and neighbors grew cold, her mother said. “We were excluded from the society,” her mother recalls. “We could have escaped, but I wanted to prove to those wool hat ladies at the church that it is not we who are guilty.”
When Father Wentczuk arrived in Wegrow, some locals complained to the bishop. “He
shouldn’t be a priest, and he definitely shouldn’t be around children,” said Ewa Swiniarska, a church member. “Older people are more supportive…they grew up in a different world.”
Father Wentczuk was distraught when his bishop told him he was considering transferring him, according to Dr. Landzberg, in whom the doctor said the priest confided. The doctor, who describes herself as an atheist, defended the priest to the bishop. “It’s typical man behavior.
And this is just a man in a cassock,” she said.
After Father Wentczuk told parishioners he might be moved, dozens of churchgoers stormed the bishop’s office carrying a roll of wallpaper signed by most of the church’s several hundred regulars. People deserve a second chance, one said. Fifteen-year-old girls dress like women, another protested. A week later, the bishop decided to allow him to stay.
Ms. Milkowska, now 27, was frustrated when she heard of the decision, and expressed outrage that anyone would blame her for what happened.
“What he did is still very much alive in me,” she says. “I find it hard to comprehend.”
Corrections & Amplifications
The Rev. Roman Jurczak was convicted of the sexual abuse of a girl younger than 15. An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated he was convicted of performing sexual acts on two girls. (Feb. 22, 2019)
Write to Drew Hinshaw at drew.hinshaw@wsj.com and Francis X. Rocca at francis.rocca@wsj.com Appeared in the February 23, 2019, print edition as ‘Forgiveness for Abusive Priests Divides Church.
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