Syzdek Family Newsletter

From the AP:

Like a religious relic, the heart of composer Frederic Chopin rests in a Warsaw church, untouched since it was preserved in alcohol after his death in 1849 at age 39.

And that’s how the Polish government wants to keep it.

Scientists want to remove the heart for DNA tests to see if Chopin actually died from cystic fibrosis and not tuberculosis as his death certificate stated. But the government says that’s not a good reason to disturb the remains of a revered native son.

The heart lies in a jar sealed inside a pillar at Warsaw’s Holy Cross Church — and the only time it has been removed was for safekeeping during World War II.

Before it was returned in 1951, a doctor examined the heart and found it perfectly preserved in an alcohol that many think is cognac. Chopin died in France, where his body is buried, but he asked that his heart be sent to his homeland.

Cystic fibrosis, an incurable genetic disease, was not discovered until many decades after Chopin’s death, and the scientists who want to examine the heart say many of his symptoms match that illness, including respiratory infections, recurrent fevers, delayed puberty and infertility.

A spokeswoman for the Culture Ministry, Iwona Radziszewska, told The Associated Press on Thursday that ministry officials consulted experts and decided that “this was neither the time to give approval, nor was it justified by the potential knowledge to be gained.”

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From the New York Times (link):

The newly appointed archbishop of Warsaw, Stanislaw W. Wielgus, resigned today after admitting two days earlier that he had collaborated with Poland’s Communist-era secret police. The revelation has shaken one of Europe’s largest Catholic communities and refocused scrutiny on charges that some clergy were Communist collaborators up until the 1980s even as the Roman Catholic Church was supporting dissidents. The archbishop had tried to minimize reports of his collaboration, which surfaced two weeks after Pope Benedict XVI named him to the job on Dec. 6, insisting that his contacts with the country’s feared Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, or Security Service, were benign and routine. But Bishop Wielgus admitted to deeper involvement on Friday after documents from secret police files were published in Polish newspapers that suggested he had informed on fellow clerics for decades, beginning in the late 1960s.

Bishop Wielgus has maintained that his collaboration with the S.B., as the Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa was known, did not involve spying on anyone and did not hurt anyone. Nonetheless, any cooperation between the Polish clergy and the S.B. is troubling to Poles, as it is to people all over the former Soviet bloc, because of the Catholic Church under the Polish-born Pope John Paul II was considered a beacon of hope and encouragement to people fighting Communist oppression.

Bells will toll Sunday when Stanislaw Wielgus is inducted as Warsaw’s new archbishop, succeeding Cardinal Jozef Glemp. But din of another kind is dominating now, and Catholic journalist Kazimierz Sowa is not alone in seeing “black clouds” hanging over Wielgus’ accession to one of the most important posts in Poland’s Catholic Church. Archbishop Wielgus, 67 years old and formerly the bishop of Plock, is alleged to have spied for years on his fellow priests. Historian and civil rights’ ombudsman Andrzej Paczkowski, who set up a historians’ commission to examine the secret service’s documents, said Thursday he had “no doubt at all” that Wielgus was an informant.

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The New York Times reports that he denies that he was an informant:

Archbishop Stanislaw Wielgus, the new Catholic prelate of Warsaw who is caught in eastern Europe’s widening hunt for former collaborators with the Communist-era secret police, denied today that he had ever spied for Poland’s Sluzba Bezpieczenstwa, the security service known by its initials. He insisted that recently uncovered files naming him as an informant were filled with fabrications.

From Polskie Radio (link):

Around seven thousand EU soldiers, including five hundred from Poland, will take part in a UN peacekeeping mission in Lebanon, which will help enforce ceasefire between Israel and Hizbollah guerrillas.
Speaking after an EU foreign minister meeting in Brussels, Polish head of diplomacy Anna Fotyga said she had expressed readiness to increase the Polish contingent in Lebanon to about 500 troops. Presently, 214 Polish soldiers are serving in Lebanon. The core of the peacekeeping force will be provided by France and Italy.