Polish researchers clarify, defend Cardinal Karol Wojtyła’s record on clerical abuse

Over the years, recurring accusations have been made in the media in Poland and elsewhere that Cardinal Karol Wojtyła, the future Pope John Paul II, had covered up cases of clerical sexual abuse and had even transferred accused priests from parish to parish.

But Tomasz Krzyżak, an expert in canon law and journalist who has conducted research in Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance and the newly opened archives of the Archdiocese of Kraków, disagrees with those claims. He says that the future Pope St. John Paul II, “dealt with sexual abuse seriously, applied the provisions of canon law, and never covered anything up.”

Krzyżak is pursuing a PhD in canon law at the Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Warsaw. Since 2024, he has been the chairman of the “Commission to Explain and Remedy Sensitive Matters,” including sexual abuse, in the Diocese of Sosnowiec. He is also an editor of the Plus-Minus weekend supplement of the Rzeczpospolita daily.

Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was the Archbishop of Kraków from 1964 to 1978. Krzyżak and his colleague Piotr Litka have studied Wojtyła’s reaction to several priests in his see accused of sexually abusing minors; articles based on their research have been published in the past several years in Plus-Minus.

One such case involved Father Eugeniusz Surgent, who was from the Diocese of Lubaczów but worked in the Archdiocese of Kraków. The first time Wojtyła’s curia learned of accusations of his abuse was in 1969, upon receiving an anonymous letter.

“In those days, anonymous letters to bishops were thrown in the trash,” Krzyżak says. Yet the Kraków curia read it, and Wojtyła sent Surgent for a psychiatric examination. Such a response was “extraordinary,” Krzyżak says. The psychiatrist’s evaluation said nothing about Surgent’s sexuality but instead mentioned his psychopathic and manipulative personality; no other accusations of molestation emerged at this time. Two years later, Surgent became the pastor at the rural parish of Sól-Kiczora. After a visitation, auxiliary bishop Albin Małysiak returned to Kraków with a glowing report.

Upon receiving complaints that Surgent had molested young boys, in 1973, the Kraków Archdiocese made an investigation. Subsequently, Wojtyła dismissed Surgent from Sól-Kiczora and banned him from hearing confessions; five days later, he was expelled from the archdiocese.

Surgent was later arrested. After Surgent’s release from prison, Cardinal Wojtyła did not allow him to work as a priest in his archdiocese. In response to a Christmas card from the abuser, Cardinal Wojtyła wrote a letter reminding him of the sanctions and sent a circular to the vicars and rectors of Kraków parishes, imploring them to “not allow [Surgent] to exercise his priestly functions.”

In 1975, Bishop Marian Rechowicz, the apostolic administrator of Lubaczów, wrote to Wojtyła, asking him to issue further sanctions against Surgent. The cardinal sent the priest to a monastery in Gostyń as a penitent. There, Surgent could not administer the sacraments or work as a catechist, but instead performed manual labor in the monastery.

In 1978, months before Wojtyła was elected pope, the Oratorians in Gostyń wrote that Surgent’s behavior was “good” and asked the cardinal to allow him to preach the Word of God and hear confessions. Wojtyła consented. “From the perspective of 2026, we know that was a mistake,” Krzyżak says. “Back then, however, not even psychologists were aware of the scale of trauma experienced by victims of abuse or that it is difficult to cure such sexual disorders.”

Another offender in Wojtyła’s archdiocese was Father Józef Loranc. When, in 1970, Wojtyła learned that the priest had molested underage girls, the future pope summoned Loranc to the curia. Loranc confessed his guilt, and Wojtyła suspended him and sent him to a monastery for a penitential retreat. Days later, Loranc was arrested.

When Loranc was released from prison, the ecclesiastical court in Kraków decided, in accordance with canon law, that since he had already been punished by civil law, it would refrain from levying an additional punishment. Yet in a letter to Loranc, Wojtyła wrote that the court’s decision “does not erase your crime or your guilt.” In 1971, the chancellor of the Kraków curia wrote to Poland’s Supreme Court that after his release from prison, Loranc “would not be able to exercise his priestly ministry,” while “employing him as a catechist will never be considered.”

In 1971, Wojtyła sent Loranc to a monastery in Zakopane, where he copied liturgical manuscripts. The priest was banned from administering the sacraments and teaching religion. Eventually, after displaying exemplary behavior for several years, he was allowed to hear confessions, celebrate the Mass, and even became a hospital chaplain in Chrzanów, but was never allowed to work with the young as a catechist.

Krzyżak notes the shortcomings of canon law, which allowed such moves, yet emphasizes that as pope, John Paul issued a new code of canon law in 1983. He notes that the 1917 code allowed for the defrocking of priests for various offenses, but none were related to sexual abuse.

Meanwhile, Code 1395 §2 of John Paul II’s revised code states that priests who committed “offenses against the Sixth Commandment” with minors under sixteen are “to be punished with just penalties, not excluding dismissal from the clerical state.”

Krzyżka also highlights John Paul II’s 2001 landmark document Sacramentorum sanctitatis tutela, drafted in close cooperation with Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI and then-prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Its procedural norms extended the statute of limitations and increased the age for the canonical crime of sexual abuse of a minor to eighteen. Shortly after the issuing of this document, the Congregation was given the authority to suspend the statute of limitations in some cases, which is not possible in civil law.

It is clear from Tomasz Krzyżak’s research that Cardinal Wojtyła never ignored sexual abuse in his diocese and always punished guilty priests, even if some decisions were imperfect from the perspective of contemporary psychological knowledge. And, while pontiff, he made the Church’s procedures more protective of victims.

“Compared to most other bishops in communist Poland and likely much of the world at the time, Wojtyła’s response to sexual abuse was exemplary,” Krzyżak concludes.