Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski

rdf:langString Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski

rdf:langString Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski

rdf:langString Tadeusz Isakowicz-Zaleski

rdf:langString Polish

rdf:langString Tadeusz Bohdan Isakowicz-Zaleski (Armenian: Թադևոս Վարդապետ Իսահակյան-Զալեսկի, romanized: Tadevos Vartapet Isahakian-Zaleski) is a Polish Roman Catholic and Armenian Catholic priest, author and activist. Born in 1956, in Kraków, Isakowicz-Zaleski was an activist of the anticommunist student opposition in Kraków in the late 1970s, became a Solidarity chaplain in Kraków's Nowa Huta district in the 1980s, and later an avid supporter of the lustration of the Polish Church. On 3 May 2006, he was awarded the Commander's Cross of the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of Poland's highest orders. Subsequently in 2007, he was awarded the Order of the Smile and Polish Ombudsmans Order of Paweł Włodkowic. In 1985, he was twice tortured by Poland's communist-era secret police (Słuzba Bezpieczeństwa, SB), and some twenty years later in 2006 he started researching the secret police archives kept by Poland's Institute of National Remembrance to discover that 39 Archdiocese of Kraków priests had collaborated with the regime between 1944 and 1989. This resulted in the much publicized 'Church Spy scandal' in Poland, where till then the Polish Church was only known for its role in battling communism and preserving traditional and national values both during the partitions of Poland and in the communist era. Subsequently in 2007 he published his controversial book "Księża wobec bezpieki na przykładzie archidiecezji krakowskiej" (Polish Priests and the Communist Secret Police) on priests who cooperated with communist secret services. He is the subject of a documentary 'Poland's Turbulent Priest', shown on BBC World News in 2009, about his struggle with the communist regime and the Polish church.