Catholic news agency head resigns due to ‘totalitarian' reforms by Polish bishops

The Catholic Herald

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The head of one of Europe’s largest Catholic news agencies has resigned in protest over media reforms proposed by the Polish Church. Marcin Przeciszewski, the longtime president of Poland's Catholic news agency KAI, has accused his country’s bishops of acting illegally and reviving “solutions known from totalitarian times”, <a href="https://www.osvnews.com/longtime-head-of-polish-catholic-news-agency-resigns-as-bishops-seek-tighter-control/">reports</a> OSV News. “These reforms are superficial and unnecessary,” Przeciszewski said. “We’ve tried to provide honest, responsible coverage of various issues, rather than just putting out propaganda. But most bishops seem to believe KAI should just be offering PR apologetics.” Przeciszewski, a lay Catholic, spoke with OSV News after confirming his resignation in a June 26 statement, in which he accused Poland’s bishops of “effectively liquidating” his agency by removing “any possibility for journalistic autonomy”. His resignation follows what OSV News calls "a major shakeup" drawn up by the spokesperson for the Polish bishops’ conference, 60-year-old Jesuit Father Leszek Gęsiak. The plan proposes that KAI will be incorporated into a new “Bishops’ Conference Media Group”, which would be coordinated by Father Gęsiak, who was reappointed on 6 June for a second five-year term as the conference's spokesperson. The new media project, approved in March 2025, but as yet not actioned, was discussed again at the bishops’ plenary conference that occurred 10-12 June in Katowice; a final decision on the project was postponed pending legal advice, notes OSV News. Przeciszewski said KAI staffers have sought their own legal guidance about the reforms while receiving “supportive messages” from many fellow journalists. “Everything KAI published fully accorded with Church teaching, and I think we well understood our editorial tasks,” Przeciszewski told OSV News. “However, most of today’s bishops seem to confuse our role with that of a press office, completely failing to grasp that Catholic media must have a degree of independence to fulfil their role." Created by the Polish bishops’ conference in 1993 as the first Catholic news agency in post-communist Eastern Europe, KAI has been led by Przeciszewski for 32 years. It has a program council of five bishops, currently headed by Archbishop Adrian Galbas of Warsaw. The agency cooperates with other Catholic agencies, such as Austria's Kathpress and Germany's KNA, and it has worked alongside the separate online service Opoka.pl, which was founded by Poland’s bishops in 1998, OSV News notes. It adds that KAI has achieved "prominence as a key source for Church news in Poland and abroad". It also notes that although KAI was sometimes criticised for being "subservient to official Church positions", the Polish Catholic news agency played a role in exposing clerical sexual abuse cover-ups by Polish bishops. The agency also "bitterly" criticised a decision in June to dismiss Archbishop Wojciech Polak from his role as a leader of the team of experts preparing the ground for a much-needed independent commission to investigate previous alleged cases in Poland of the abuse of children by clergy. Other KAI dispatches that reportedly have offended Polish bishops include an 28 April interview with Catholic theologian Monika Bialkowska, who told the agency that the Church did not “need a clerical caste that uses its own language and does not want to talk to people". In a 27 June interview with the Polish Press Agency, PAP, Father Gęsiak said his proposed reforms followed lengthy talks between Poland’s bishops on “the functional principles” of Catholic media in the country. He added that KAI, Opoka and his own press office had all been created by the bishops’ conference, and said that there had been “no doubt” among Church leaders that these media organisations required “restructuring ... mostly for financial reasons”, while adding that it was indispensable to ensure KAI’s output was made “consistent with the bishops’ message". He also told PAP: “For some time now, we’ve observed certain financial problems with KAI and the Opoka news portal, while KAI communiques have also appeared which are not entirely consistent with the institutional message of the Catholic Church in Poland." Przeciszewski, however, rejected the claims. He said his agency had been created in 1993 by the late Archbishop Józef Życiński of Lublin, with support from Cardinals Józef Glemp and Franciszek Macharski, and on the basis of best Catholic media practices abroad, in order to supplement official bishops’ conference communications with “attractive information responding to media needs", OSV News reports. Przeciszewski said KAI’s autonomy had benefited the Church by enabling the agency to “present the Catholic viewpoint in public debates”, while not involving the authority and position of the bishops. He warned that Father Gęsiak’s reforms would destroy KAI’s media credibility by ensuring all decisions are “issued in a mandatory manner, for immediate implementation". “Apart from being against the law, since media groups or consortiums must respect the autonomy of the boards of member-companies, this solution means a return to solutions known from totalitarian times,” Przeciszewski said. “This will be unfavourable to the Church in Poland, especially given the enormous media challenges it faces in these difficult times.” Photo: Marcin Przeciszewski. (Image from <a href="https://www.ekai.pl/bio/marcin-przeciszewski/">ekai.pl</a>.)

The Catholic Herald

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