Spying on the Pope

Want further evidence that Communism is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity?

Why do you suppose the Soviets expended so much effort spying upon (not to mention attempting to assassinate) Pope John Paul II?

Here's just one example of how the KGB turned priest against Pope by exploiting the priest's overweening pride:

What follows describes just one case of the active measures directed against Karol Wojtyla. The agent responsible was Father Konrad Stanislaw Hejmo, a Dominican priest. When initially courted, he was known by the code name "Dominik." After his recruitment it became "Hejnal" (Signal). It appears that, technically, Hejmo never signed an affidavit formalizing his status as an "secret collaborator." Instead, he was classified as an "operational contact." Hejmo's recruiter and case officer was Colonel Waclaw Glowacki of the Security Service (Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa -- SB). Before his transfer to civilian intelligence after 1982, Glowacki was with the 5th Section of the IV (anti-Church) Department of the interior ministry.

More than 700 pages of documents and several magnetic tape spools of recordings reflect the extent of Father Hejmo's work. The contacts between the agent and the secret police began circa 1973. At the time, the priest was trying to launch a Dominican periodical, W drodze (On the Way). In approaching the SB, Hejmo hoped to have eased the oppressive Communist censorship regulations and limits on paper distribution faced by his publication, where he served as editorial secretary. The relationship became more formal in November 1975. At the end of the following year, the SB opened up a file on him as a "candidate for secret collaborator." Next, it registered him as a full-fledged "secret collaborator" even though, in violation of its own rules, it never asked him to fill out the appropriate paperwork.

Father Hejmo informed his secret police handlers not only about Karol Wojtyla, both before and after Wojtyla's elevation to the papal throne, but also about Radio Free Europe, anti-Communist intellectuals, and dissident Catholic priests, including Father Jerzy Popieluszko, who was subsequently murdered by the SB. Further, Father Hejmo wrote pro-Communist articles for his publication. He condemned the anti-regime activities of his fellow Dominicans, for instance their 1977 hunger strike in solidarity with Czech dissidents. His reports were apparently made available to Colonel Tadeusz Grunwald of the IV Department's so-called "D" Group (Disintegration) to implement active measures against the Catholic faith in general, and dissident priests and lay activists in particular. Grunwald's men specialized in black propaganda, malicious gossip, and forgeries.

Father Hejmo hoped his collaboration with the secret police would not only benefit his periodical, but also help him, incredibly, to become head of the Dominican order in Poland. He accepted a few tokens and gifts from his handlers -- mostly alcohol. On the other hand, his secret police friends did not trust him. His phone was tapped and mail read. Contacts with the priest stopped briefly in 1980 after Hejmo was transferred to the Holy See.

Totalitarians cannot tolerate the liberation of people through faith. For all the Left's overblown fears of Christian theocracy, they seem to muster no outrage at all when tyrants target clergymen.

Shows which side they're on, doesn't it?