Not surprising, of course, but a reminder how
totalitarian regimes insinuate themselves into every corner of
society, and turn subjects into traitors against their friends,
communities and morals:
Newly-discovered
documents reveal a jealous cleric's attempts to sell out the
pope.
[S]ecret police were helped in their efforts by one of
Wojtyla's fellow clerics, Wladyslaw Kulczycki -- an informer who,
until his death in 1968, sent in regular reports on the rising star
of the Polish church.
An adviser to Cracow's top church officials, Kulczycki was incensed
that the younger Wojtyla was elevated to the rank of bishop and
then archbishop while he was passed over. His reports denounced
Wojtyla as a lightweight and dismissed his growing
popularity.
The article doesn't say when Kulczycki's reports began, though Pope
Pius XII made Wojtyla a bishop in 1958 (he was one of the last
bishops Pius XII made), so maybe Kulczycki reported for ten
years.
The article also doesn't say whether these documents were among
those released
earlier this year.
HT to Patrick Sweeney at
extreme catholic: The Vatican: Peeking Into the Past.