Church examines its conscience

The meeting was a result the of Warsaw's archbishop Stanisław Wielgus' resignation last Sunday, after he was shown to have collaborated with the communist secret police.

"Our meeting is a response to the extraordinary situation the church is facing," said Father Józef Kloch, a spokesman for the bishops' conference. He said the bishops would try to come up with a "systematic solution about how to deal with secret service files," currently held and supervised by the National Remembrance Institute.

Poland did not open its secret files after the collapse of communism in 1989 as successive governments promoted reconciliation between supporters and opponents of the communist regime. Last year, however, journalists and academics were given access to the communist files, which revealed the truth about some of the country's prominent figures.

The archbishop scandal, which the Vatican called a "moment of great suffering for the Church," has forced Polish bishops to consider whether to make public the names of priests who cooperated with the secret services. The Polish church, an active supporter of the pro-democracy Solidarity movement during the 1980s, was a major target of the secret police recruiters. (Reuters)