Ex-Agent: Russian Spy Was Colleague of Pope Francis
A former Polish intelligence staff officer reported to
Italian online magazine on espionage activity in the Vatican in the
1970s and 1980s
Rome (kath.net/KAP)
In the 1970s and 1980s, a number of spies, according to a former Polish
secret service staff officer, were present in the Vatican, allegedly
also a collaborator of today's pope. According to the Italian
online magazine "Faro di Roma" (Thursday), ex-agent Tomasz Turowski said
that in the Church's center there were informants from China, the USA,
as well as other Eastern bloc states.
A professor known under the name of "Russian" had been involved in the secret negotiations of the Holy See with the Soviet Union as a translator, and as early as November 1981, Turowski had reported that the Vatican had been aware of an imminent imposition of martial law in Poland; This took place on the 13th of December. Turowski said in the interview that he could not give up the name of the clergyman because he had worked for Pope Francis until recently.
The 68-year-old Turowski himself, at the end of the 1970s, was tapped as a theologian and Novice into the Roman religious center of the Jesuits, allegedly with a letter of recommendation from the archbishop, Karol Wojtyla. In his own words, his task was to spy on the Jesuit military chaplains in NATO. In addition, after Wojtyla's election as Pope John Paul II, he also had the commission to protect him from attacks.
"The Communist Party secretaries knew that if that were to happen to the Pope, they would be the first suspects," Turowski said. In order to draw the attention of the Vatican to security risks, he had used table discussions in the presence of radio director, Roberto Tucci, as a collaborator at Radio Vatican, where he dropped incidental information; Tucci was at the same time responsible for the organization of papers and therefore sensitive to security issues.
Turowski was removed as an agent from the Vatican in 1984 before his planned priestly ordination. After the end of the Communist regime, he joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1993. Later he served as a Polish Ambassador in Russia and Cuba.
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