Since March, Poland has witnessed an unprecedented attack on the reputation of St John Paul II. Up to that point, the Polish pope had enjoyed fairly widespread respect in his homeland, and even the critical liberal media had not been openly hostile to him.
The climax of the attack came on March 8, with a book entitled Maxima culpa: What the Church is Hiding about John Paul II by Dutch journalist Ekke Overbeek, who for 10 years has specialised in tracking down paedophilia in the Catholic Church in Poland. The author is also a correspondent for the Dutch daily Trouw in Warsaw. The book was preceded by a series of articles promoting it, published in late February in Poland’s largest daily paper, the liberal-left Gazeta Wyborcza. In turn, the book was published by the publisher of that paper, the Agora company.
