CNS STORY: Dominican superior asks priest to stop work over communist-era charge

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CNS Story:

HEJMO-SUSPEND May-9-2005 (470 words) With photos posted April 28. xxxi

Dominican superior asks priest to stop work over communist-era charge

By Cindy Wooden
Catholic News Service

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The provincial superior of a Polish Dominican working in Rome has asked the priest to suspend his pastoral work while Dominican and Vatican officials look into charges that he collaborated with communist-era secret police during the 1980s.

Father Maciej Zieba, head of the Dominicans' Polish province, told reporters at the Vatican May 7 that Father Konrad Hejmo, director of a Rome pastoral center for Polish pilgrims, had been asked not to work at least until the end of May.

Surrounded by reporters after a meeting with unnamed Vatican officials, Father Zieba said he did not believe Father Hejmo was a spy or that he willingly provided information about Pope John Paul II's activities to the Polish secret service.

However, the superior said it seemed clear that Father Hejmo "talked too much and with too much ease to people who could have used his information."

"He is my brother," Father Zieba said, "but we also must seek the truth."

Poland's National Remembrance Institute identified Father Hejmo April 27 as a former "secret collaborator," using the code names "Hejnal" and "Dominik."

Institute historian Andrzej Paczkowksi told Poland's Gazeta Wyborcza daily April 28 that Father Hejmo's 700-page file listed him as an "operational agent" from the time of his move to Rome in 1979. Paczkowksi said the institute also had cassettes with the priest's voice.

After the news was reported, Father Hejmo told Poland's Catholic information agency, KAI, that he never "consciously provided information" to the secret police.

"I did not collaborate and never had direct contacts with communist services," Father Hejmo told KAI. "In relation to the information I provided, I think this is all nonsense. I never got in touch with security service representatives."

Father Zieba told reporters he had spent six hours reading the information collected by the Polish institute, but "I am not an expert on espionage, and we must allow experts to work on it."

He said he had been at the Vatican to request that a joint commission of Vatican officials and Dominicans study the material.

Asking Father Hejmo to refrain from organizing visits by Polish pilgrims "for two or three weeks would be best for him and for all, so that all of the material and the position of Father Konrad can be studied, and then a decision will be made," Father Zieba said.

A spokesman for the Dominican generalate in Rome said May 9 that the Polish province was handling the matter and that Father Hejmo "was put on the inactive list while the case is being studied."

Father Hejmo joined the Dominicans in 1952 and was ordained in 1961. After helping organize the pope's 1979 Polish pilgrimage, he was sent to Rome, where he organized Vatican pilgrimages for Polish Catholics.

END

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