While the world is still digesting the McCarrick report, released by the Vatican on November 10, the blame game has begun in Poland, St John Paul II’s homeland. One of the report’s few living protagonists is Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s longtime personal secretary, who was mentioned 45 times in the document.
But the storm for Dziwisz actually started the day before the report was released, when TVN24 aired “Don Stanislaw” by journalist Marcin Gutowski, a 90-minutes-long documentary “showing another face of Cardinal Dziwisz,” as the station advertised it.
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The film aired a long list of accusations from covering up for his friends from the seminary, to the role of Dziwisz in the case of the late Father Marcial Maciel, the disgraced founder of the Legionaries of Christ, another other dark spot in John Paul’s pontificate.
The McCarrick report and the documentary “Don Stanislaw” both contained accusations Dziwisz hid correspondence from  John Paul.
But the Vatican report also confirmed letters sent to Dziwisz regarding the McCarrick case, and even the one written by the American prelate in August 2000 defending himself, was indeed given to the pope. The release of the McCarrick report has been hotly debated in Poland, especially how it might influence the legacy of John Paul.