Meanwhile, another archbishop has rejected accusations that he also acted as an informer and published an explanation of his secret police contacts.

Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, who resigned in early January after serving for just two days as archbishop of Warsaw, told the Polish Catholic information agency, KAI, "In connection with media accusations that I gave the apostolic nuncio in Poland a false testimony about my contacts with the special services, I submit a copy of this testimony, whose contents I fully uphold.

"I swear by God in the Holy Trinity that, during the meetings and talks I held with police and intelligence representatives in connection with my trips abroad in the 1970s, I never acted against the church and never did or said anything bad against members of the clergy or laity."

In an interview published the previous day, Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk, apostolic nuncio, said Wielgus failed to "give a full picture" of his links with the secret police — the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa or SB — before Pope Benedict XVI named him archbishop of Warsaw Dec. 2.

Kowalczyk said he had received no information about Wielgus' secret police contacts from the Catholic University of Lublin, where he served as rector 1989-98, or from the diocese of Plock, where he was serving at the time he was named to Warsaw. He added that Wielgus had "fully maintained his previous testimony" and "assured the Holy See there was no collaboration" when a Polish weekly, Gazeta Polska, accused him of being an informer Dec. 20.

"(H)e did not say a single word about the fact of his collaboration. All his testimony was submitted under oath, so it was difficult to question it. ... In this way, the Holy See was informed of everything Archbishop Wielgus said about his work and contacts with the SB. From the knowledge passed on by the bishop, there had been no collaboration."

Wielgus announced his resignation Jan. 7 after confirming in a Jan. 5 statement he had signed pledges to inform for the secret police.

Meanwhile, at an emergency meeting in Warsaw Jan. 12, the bishops' conference said Poland's 44 dioceses would be encouraged to begin checking the background of local priests, while a church historical commission, appointed in November, would if requested study the files kept on bishops, leaving a final decision on those most "burdened by collaboration" to the Vatican.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican secretary of state, told Vatican Radio Jan. 13 he was pleased with the bishops' decisions.

"Communication is essential," he said. "A lack of communication in any field is dangerous, deadly, and is an obstacle to make mature, well-founded decisions and for carrying out a discernment especially on the authenticity or falseness of documents."

Bertone said that such a discernment is essential in the case of any one accused of collaborating with a totalitarian regime because there is a serious possibility that the documents contain false information.

Church sources said further media allegations were likely after Poland's Dziennik daily published the code names of 12 bishops it said were informers in 1978, the year of Pope John Paul II's election.

In Lublin, Archbishop Jozef Zycinski denied he had used the code name "Filozof" while working in Krakow and said he had never "undertaken any action that could be described as SB collaboration." In an article in the Catholic Tygodnik Powszechny weekly, Zycinski said he asked Poland's official National Remembrance Institute to investigate claims against him last June, adding that he had now made a similar request with the church historical commission.

The archbishop said he had been approached by the secret police as a parish pastor in 1974 and later while sending Polish students to study at the Catholic University of America in Washington with funding from the U.S. government. However, he added that he had never received propositions of collaboration from secret police agents.