The Slovakian Catholic Church's involvement with the Stasi

In Slovakia new files have come to light according to which Jan Sokol, Archbishop of Trnava and Bratislava, maintained close ties with the former communist secret police in Czechoslovakia. Among other things, he allegedly passed on confidential information about a Slovak priest living in exile in the Vatican to the secret police in 1988. Commentator Marius Kopcsay is blunt in his criticism: "These new suspicions come at a time when the Archbishop is already under pressure for having paid tribute to the Independent Slovak Republic [which was dependent on Nazi Germany] under Jozef Tiso's rule. It appears that Sokol has fond memories of the totalitarian regime and worked together with those who ruled it. From a legal point of view he is presumed innocent. However, in politics such suspicions would be enough to warrant his stepping down until the whole matter had been cleared up. But the Church is not a political party. It doesn't have to worry about its image or its popularity in opinion polls. Other values play a more important role, for example one's conscience."

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