Pope John Paul II was spied on in the Vatican by priests who acted as informers for secret services in Warsaw and Moscow, Poland's highest-ranking cardinal said on Tuesday.
Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the Primate of Poland, said that the Communist regime which lasted in his country until 1989 managed to enlist 15% of the nation's priests as spies in one form or other.
Some of them were working in the Vatican when John Paul was pope, the prelate told ANSA on the sidelines of an inter-religious meeting in Assisi.
"There were spies in the Vatican. Moscow had every interest in knowing what was happening in Rome with a Polish pope on the throne of St Peter," he said.
Cardinal Glemp's remarks appeared to be based on revelations about former spies that have surfaced in Poland since the recent opening of secret police archives from the Communist era.
It has emerged that many highly respected people - including journalists, doctors and priests - supplied information to secret services, sometimes unwittingly. The cardinal mentioned only one alleged Vatican spy by name. This was Father Konrad Hejmo, a Polish priest who for many years organised visits by pilgrims from his country to papal general audiences.
"He was certainly a spy. Personally I am convinced that Father Hejmo accused people and prepared reports," Cardinal Glemp said.
The prelate criticised a tendency to condemn the people from many walks of life who acted as spies. "People forget that they were living at a very, very difficult time," he said.
The early part of John Paul's pontificate (1978-2005) was closely tied up with his fight against Communism.
Through his active support for the Polish free trade union Solidarnosc, the pontiff was credited with helping achieve the collapse of Communism, first in Poland and then the rest of the Warsaw Pact.
An Italian parliamentary investigation concluded in March this year that the 1981 assassination attempt on him was the result of precise orders from the Soviet Union. The decision to assassinate the Polish pope was taken at the highest level of the Politburo, the enquiry's final report said.
Those findings were part of an investigation based on documents smuggled out of Moscow by Vassiliev Mitrokhin, a former KGB archivist who defected in 1992.
