Polish priest accused of spying on late Pope

WARSAW - The state agency overseeing Poland's communist-era files today accused a Polish priest at the Vatican of spying on the late Pope John Paul for his country's secret services.

Father Konrad Hejmo informed on the Polish Pontiff during the 1980s when Poland's communist rulers were battling against the Solidarity movement, the head of the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) told a news conference.

Hejmo told Reuters TV in Rome that he had never cooperated knowingly with the secret service, but said he had passed on information back to Poland "in good faith".

"It's not true (that I was an agent)," he said on the doorstep of his residence near the Vatican City.

Poles are still mourning the death on April 2 of John Paul, credited with inspiring the Solidarity trade union movement's struggle against communism.

"The IPN has documents that show Father Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo was cooperating during the 1980s with the security services," said Leon Kieres, director of the IPN.

Hejmo - a member of the Vatican circle of Polish clergy - has headed the Polish "Pilgrimage House", a hostel for visiting Poles, for many years, and won wide media coverage in Poland for his "insider knowledge" of the state of John Paul's health.

"People have always been sent (from Poland) and it was really hard to tell if all the people who arrived with good intentions (or) if anyone was a spy," he said.

"I was told to follow the Italian press, the foreign press, all of the newspapers - what they are saying about the Polish Church, what they are saying about the Church in general and what they are saying about the Holy Father. But it was all done in good faith".

Hejmo told Polish TVN 24 he now believed a man he had met and given documents to might have been an agent for communist East Germany's security service, but that he had never consciously given him information.

"I never (collaborated) knowingly ... now it occurs to me that he could have been on the other side - working for the (East) Germans," Hejmo said, declining to name the man other than by his initial M.

Polish public television quoted Hejmo as saying the allegations were "absurd", and played what it said was a tape of him explaining that "some recordings may have been spliced by the kind of people who just wait for a particular word ..."

LITTLE OF INTEREST

The IPN did not say what information Hejmo handed over, but Marek Lasota, an IPN member from Krakow who works on secret service involvement with the Polish Church, said Hejmo might not have passed on much of interest.

"Hejmo didn't have very close access. He was as close (to John Paul) as other Polish priests in the Vatican were. I think he rather gave away second-hand information," he said.

In his research, Lasota found the secret services had tried to discredit the Pope in the 1980s by producing fake diaries from a woman purported to have been having an affair with him.

John Paul, who supported pro-democracy activists while an archbishop in Krakow, continued to help as leader of the Roman Catholic Church, meeting Solidarity leader Lech Walesa several times during visits to Poland.

He is widely regarded as a prime influence in the collapse of communism in Poland and thoughout eastern Europe.

- REUTERS