Polish priest who organised World Youth Day charged with sex abuse

Notes from Poland/July 16, 2024

By Daniel Tilles

A priest who was Poland’s main national organiser for World Youth Day (WYD) – a major global event for young people held by the Catholic church – has been charged with sexual abuse and placed in detention.

Prosecutors in the city of Zamość announced on Monday that they had charged the 45-year-old man, who can be named only as Mariusz W. under Polish privacy law, with seven offences that took place between 2011 and 2021.

Mariusz W. served as a local coordinator of WYD in the Radom diocese from 2014 to 2016. In the latter year, Poland hosted the event (pictured above), which was attended by Pope Francis.

In 2021, he was appointed as director of the Polish church’s national organising office for WYD, overseeing preparations in Poland for the 2023 event, which was held in Portugal.

In December 2021, the Catholic diocese of Radom notified prosecutors of potential crimes committed by Mariusz W. after they received testimony from several young women who claimed to have been abused by him.

The priest – who also worked as the youth chaplain for the Radom diocese and academic chaplain and lecturer at a university in Radom – was immediately removed from his functions and restrictions were placed on his priestly ministry.

“The authorities of the Radom diocese have received with regret the information about the priest’s reprehensible actions and apologise to the wronged persons and all those who were affected by the cleric’s unacceptable conduct,” wrote the diocese at the time.

Since then, prosecutors have investigated the claims against Mariusz W., including interviewing his alleged victims. That led them on Monday to bring charges against the priest. On Tuesday, a court approved the prosecutors’ request to place Mariusz W. in pretrial detention for three months.

As well as sexual abuse of young women, he is also accused of incitement to give false testimony. If found guilty, he could face up to 12 years in prison. Prosecutors have issued a call for any other alleged victims of Mariusz W. to come forward.

The Catholic church in Poland has in recent years been hit by a series of revelations of cases of sex abuse by members of the clergy and of negligence in dealing with them by bishops, several of whom have been punished by the Vatican as a result.

In May this year, the newly appointed head of Poland’s Catholic episcopate, Tadeusz Wojda, was accused of negligence in dealing with reports of sexual abuse carried out by one of his subordinates. In one case, he allegedly argued that no abuse had taken place because “it was just groping”.