CALLS for the dismissal of Monsignor Stanislaw Wielgus, the new Archbishop of Warsaw, mounted yesterday after he was challenged to say whether he had supplied intelligence to the secret police about the late Pope John Paul II.

Wielgus, 67, has confessed to spying for the Polish security service, Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, during the cold war until the communist regime collapsed in 1989. He met police agents more than 50 times in one five-year period during the 1970s.

La Repubblica, the leading Rome newspaper, said: “Atrocious suspicions are emerging: who was spied on by the police thanks to Wielgus? Perhaps even Karol Wojtyla, at first the brave young cardinal of Krakow and moral leader of dissent, later the Pope who challenged Moscow and knocked down the (Berlin) Wall?” Father Adam Boniecki, former editor of the Polish edition of Osservatore Romano, the official Vatican newspaper, said that Wielgus “would do best to resign immediately”.

Boniecki, who was close to John Paul, said: “To be Archbishop of Warsaw with this beginning is a horrible thing.”

Wielgus attempted a campaign of damage limitation with an open letter read out in churches in Warsaw yesterday. He wrote that he had confessed his failings to John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict XVI.

Wielgus said he had told Benedict about his past when the pontiff put his name forward for the post. “Today before you I confess this mistake I made years ago, as I have already confessed it to the Holy Father,” he wrote.

“I did not find at the time the wisdom, the determination and the courage to interrupt those contacts.” He added that he had first been contacted while a philosophy student in 1967 and had been threatened. He signed a collaboration agreement in 1978.

Wielgus, a former professor of medieval history and rector of the Catholic University of Lublin, insisted: “Today I can state with full conviction that I never denounced anyone and that I always tried not to harm anyone. But, simply by making myself an accomplice in this way, I caused harm to the church.”

Like many academics during the communist era he was allowed to travel abroad and was interviewed by the secret services before and after his journeys. His inside knowledge of church matters would have made him an exceptionally valuable source.

The Polish episcopate has confirmed Wielgus’s “knowing and concrete collaboration with the secret police”, but has intervened to stop more revelations.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s former personal secretary, has banned publication of the names of the 25 priests who are said to have collaborated in the 1980s.

The Vatican stood by Wielgus, saying in a terse statement that Benedict had “full confidence” in him. It added that he would make his ceremonial entrance into St John’s Cathedral in Warsaw as the new archbishop this afternoon.

Politicians appeared unsure how to respond. Poland’s ruling conservatives have put rooting out the communist past of public figures at the top of their agenda. President Lech Kaczynski said that he was “obliged” to turn up at the ceremony. But his twin brother Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the prime minister, has significantly avoided making any public commitment to attend.

Most of the church hierarchy plan to attend but there are notable exceptions. Tadeusz Goclowski, the progressive Archbishop of Gdansk, is not coming. He pleaded “other obligations”. Yesterday he told the press that Wielgus ought to ask the Vatican to relieve him from office.

Although today’s inauguration is only a formal celebration, as Wielgus technically became archbishop at 4pm on Friday, the ceremony is dividing Poland.

An opinion poll last week showed that a majority of Poles believe that he should not take up the post. Villagers from Wierzchowisku, the bishop’s birthplace, plan to travel to Warsaw to show their support.

On a visit to Poland in May, Benedict tackled the issue of “priest-spies” in remarks which appear to explain his attitude towards Wielgus. “The errors of the past,” he said then, must be recognised but without “falling prey to easy accusations . . . or ignoring the different preconceptions of the time”.

Wielgus was spying at one of the most crucial periods of modern Polish history. He was working for the secret police when Wojtyla became Pope, at the time of his failed assassination in May 1981 and throughout the foundation of the Solidarity trade union in September 1980.

Privately, leading Vatican officials expressed dismay at the embarrassment which Wielgus’s mea culpa had created for the pontiff, while playing down the scandal. “In that period everyone had contacts and were collaborators with the authorities,” one Vatican official claimed.

Cardinal Edmund Casimir Szoka, whose parents were Polish, said he was sure the Vatican had made the right choice: “The Holy See made its choice after carrying out adequate investigations.”

In the late 1970s Wojtyla was one of the few figures who resisted the communists. His support for the pro-democracy Solidarity movement and his influence in Poland helped to overthrow the Soviet-backed regime.

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