#EU #Poland #Tarnow – A Polish court on Thursday convicted Bishop Andrzej Jeż of the Diocese of Tarnów of failing to promptly notify authorities about the sexual abuse of minors by two priests from his diocese, marking the first such conviction of a sitting bishop in the country.
The District Court in Tarnów sentenced the 63-year-old prelate to two years of restriction of liberty, to be carried out through monthly deductions of 25 percent of his salary. The funds were ordered to go to the Empowering Children Foundation, a charity that supports victims of child sexual abuse. The court also required him to pay 20,000 zloty (about $5,000) to a national fund for assistance to crime victims. The verdict is not final, and the diocese said it would appeal.
Prosecutors had sought a suspended 10-month prison term and a fine. Jeż, who has led the southern Polish diocese since 2012, pleaded not guilty. In testimony, he attributed the delays to ambiguities in criminal regulations and the specific circumstances of each case. He was not present in court for the reading of the verdict.
The case centered on two priests identified under Polish privacy laws only as Stanisław P. and Tomasz K. Investigators determined that Stanisław P. had harmed at least 95 children and committed sexual acts against 77 of them over several decades in parishes in Poland and Ukraine. An internal church inquiry into him began in the 2000s, and church authorities decided to remove him from the clergy in 2013. Jeż notified prosecutors only in 2020. The criminal investigation against Stanisław P. was discontinued in 2022 because the statute of limitations had expired; he was later laicized.
In the second matter, involving Tomasz K., the bishop informed authorities only in 2021. Proceedings against that priest remained pending, complicated by his health.
The charges against Jeż were brought under a 2017 Polish law that made it a criminal offense, punishable by up to three years in prison, for anyone with credible information about certain serious crimes—including the sexual abuse of minors under 15—to fail to notify authorities immediately. Before that year, reporting such crimes was treated primarily as a social obligation rather than a strict legal duty.
In a statement after the ruling, the Tarnów diocese said it disagreed with the court’s decision. It maintained that some of the alleged offenses by Stanisław P. had occurred while he served in Ukraine and that relevant information had been passed to Ukrainian authorities. The diocese also said Jeż first learned of certain allegations in 2019 and that internal procedures were followed before state notification in 2020. It noted that one victim had contacted prosecutors as early as 2010.
The conviction formed the latest chapter in a series of clergy abuse scandals that have eroded public confidence in the Catholic Church in Poland, long one of Europe’s most devoutly Catholic nations. In 2024, the Vatican accepted the resignations of a bishop and an archbishop over negligence in handling abuse cases. Separate diocesan inquiries have identified dozens of victims and suspected abusers in other parts of the country. A 2025 poll by the Polish firm IBRiS found that the share of Poles who said they trusted the Catholic Church had fallen to 35 percent from 58 percent in 2016.
Cover Image: Bishop Andrzej Jeż of the Diocese of Tarnów.
