WARSAW (LifeSiteNews) — Father Michał Olszewski, a Catholic priest in Poland, has been in pre-trial custody since late March in connection with alleged irregularities in obtaining money from the Justice Fund (Fundusz Sprawiedliwości) for the construction of a center for victims of crime.
The Justice Fund is also at the center of the case concerning the arrest in Poland of a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe that led to an intervention by the PACE chairman, who called for MP Marcin Romanowski’s immediate release. The socially conservative Polish legal center Ordo Iuris filed an amicus brief to the Warsaw court.
It is widely believed that Olszewski’s imprisonment, which has involved alleged torture, is part of the left-leaning current Polish government’s illegal persecution of citizens linked to the former, more conservative government.
“The government has promised its voters that it will hold the PiS government accountable, especially regarding the Justice Fund. This is how the new government is showing that they are holding their predecessors accountable. It seems that Fr. Olszewski may be a victim of this process, as are two female officials from the Ministry of Justice, who have also been in jail with him for six months,” said Krzysztof Wąsowski, the defense attorney for Olszewski and one of the two female officials imprisoned in the same case.
According to Ordo Iuris, the arrests of the priest and the female official happened shortly after the unlawful change of Poland’s National Prosecutor by Justice Minister Adam Bodnar and Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and shortly after the creation of a special team within the National Prosecutor’s office to investigate how the Justice Fund was used by the former government.
Wąsowski is disgusted by the treatment of both the priest, which recalls darker days in Polish history and the unprecedented violation of his woman client’s dignity. He told Ordo Iuris’ Olivier Bault that the prosecution of Olszewski is “absolutely bizarre.”
“Previously, of course, there have been cases of priests being jailed, but as a rule, these were cases of sexual misconduct because there were some priests who simply betrayed their mission,” Wąsowski told Bault. “That is, unless we go back to communist times.”
“Father Michał is sick with celiac disease and thus requires a specific diet,” he said, adding:
He was tortured for the first 60 hours after he was detained, from his apprehension on Holy Tuesday until Holy Thursday, when he was formally arrested, and this is what Fr. Michał remembers to this day. I took the liberty of making a very bold comparison, that even Primate Wyszyński, who is a symbol of martyrdom for the faith, for the Church during the Stalinist era in Poland, was allowed to use the toilet in a dignified manner.
As for his woman client, the lawyer alleged that her modesty has been violated while she has been in prison.
“It was unthinkable, even during communist or Stalinist times, for a woman to be kept under watch by men while she was washing and taking care of her bodily needs,” he said – “with visible outrage,” Bault reported.
Disturbingly, the government-controlled Prosecutor’s Office has been influenced by allegations that the entire Ministry of Justice, during the pro-life, family-friendly PiS government’s tenure, was a criminal gang.
“This is the year 2024. Poland has been in the European Union for 20 years, since May 1, 2004. Previously, under the United Right governments led by Law and Justice (PiS), we never heard about such practices,” Wąsowski said of the abusive treatment his clients have received.
In the eyes of the law, this should not be possible, but in this case, the Prosecutor’s Office has presented a new charge based on the allegation that the former Ministry of Justice was an organized criminal group, as well as on the claim that by applying for grants from this “criminal group,” Fr. Olszewski became – probably inadvertently – a member of a criminal group. The mafia, one might say.
The legal implications for anyone who works for or with any Polish government are quite serious, the lawyer believes.
“This is a very dangerous sign for civil servants, because any official who wants to work for the state, for the public administration, given what is happening in Poland today, can assume that he or she is essentially joining an organized crime group, that he or she can be treated accordingly by the next government,” Wąsowski said. Continuing:
And this also goes for anyone who is at the head of a non-governmental organization that applies for state subsidies in a legal manner.
I would also add that in the case of this alleged organized crime group, the prosecution delayed bringing any charges for quite a long time. The first to publicly demand charges was Donald Tusk, the current Prime Minister of the Polish government. He published a tweet on the X portal (formerly Twitter) immediately after the arrest of Fr. Olszewski, in which he demanded that the prosecutor’s office bring such charges linked to participating in a criminal group.
According to Olszewski, whose lawyer made his letter public, his treatment has included being handcuffed for no good reason upon arrest, being displayed handcuffed to the public while his captors bought hot dogs, being kept in handcuffs for hours, not being permitted to contact a lawyer, being deprived of meals for two days, having only a limited access to water, and having been deprived of hygienic facilities.
The persecution of the priest may be part and parcel of a general tendency of the new Polish government to attack the role of the Catholic Church in Polish life. Earlier this week, the Church in Poland released a letter of protest entitled “With care for the homeland,” in which it listed the ways in which the current regime is violating the nation’s conscience. According to English-language news site Notes from Poland, these include:
… improper treatment of those arrested, introducing the ‘right’ to kill a human being by extending the possibility of performing abortion up to the ninth month of a child’s life, departing from moral values in many areas of social life, spreading hatred, promoting antagonisms, managing conflicts in the social space, marginalizing the importance of religion, taking away the right to practise faith and eliminating religious symbols from the public sphere.
The document reminded readers that Christianity has always been the foundation of Polish life, saying, “Let’s remember that Poland is our common home, and the Christian heritage has been its foundation for centuries.”
Poland traces its “baptism” to the 966 AD christening of Mieszko I, the first leader of what would become the Polish nation.
With material from Ordo Iuris. Published with permission.