In a Nov. 13 statement, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki said: "Before McCarrick's nomination to Washington, the pope did not receive from the American bishops full and complete information about his moral behavior, and McCarrick himself lied -- in a letter of Aug. 6, 2000 -- that he had no sexual relations with anyone."
The archbishop of Poznań was referring to a section of the 461-page report which said that John Paul II asked the apostolic nuncio to the United States in 2000 to contact four New Jersey bishops about whether McCarrick had behaved improperly with young adults.
The bishops confirmed that the then archbishop of Newark had shared a bed with young men, "but did not indicate with certainty that McCarrick had engaged in any sexual misconduct."
The report concluded that three of the four bishops gave the Vatican "inaccurate and incomplete information."
The Catholic University of Lublin was founded by the Polish bishops in 1918. It was shut down during the Nazi occupation and many of its professors and students were executed.
In 1954, Karol Wojtyła, the future John Paul II, began to lecture on ethics at the university. He was appointed to the Chair of Ethics in the university's Department of Christian Philosophy, forming a link to the institution that lasted until his election as pope in 1978.
He visited KUL in June 1987, giving a speech in which he said that academic institutions were called to "build up a community of people free in the truth."
Months after the pope's death in 2005, KUL adopted its present name: the John Paul II Catholic University of Lublin.
Last month, KUL's rector, Fr. Mirosław Kalinowski, urged academics across the world to sign an appeal committing themselves to promoting the teachings of St. John Paul II.
The statement by the rector's college concluded: "St. John Paul II's person, personalistic style of action and teaching are for us an example, a source of inspiration, and a marker in our daily struggle for the respect for the dignity and sacred inviolability of every human person."
"They indeed represent the highest imperative urging the protection of children and adolescents, that is the people most exposed to exploitation and various forms of manipulation."
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