On 5 February, Rev. Gregory Zwolinski, the former parish priest of
Kirov, 950 kilometres northeast of Moscow, went public on VK.com.
The post is highly critical of Archbishop Paolo Pezzi, (image), 64, the Italian-born head of the Moscow archdiocese.
Rev.
Zwolinski recalls that on 5 April 2024 he published on his VK.com page
an interview with Cardinal Müller, who criticised Fiducias supplicans
and showed that it was incompatible with the Bible and the teaching of
the Church.
On 6 April, Archbishop Pezzi called Zwolinski on his mobile phone and asked: "Who gave you permission to publish this material?"
The priest replied that he fully agreed with Cardinal Müller's statement and would not remove the text.
On
26 May, he published on VK.com an interview with Bishop Athanasius
Scheider, in which Scheider criticised Francis's homosexual propaganda.
The
next day, 27 May 2024, Zwolinski received a document from the Moscow
Curia in which Monsignor Pezzi ordered him to leave his parish and the
Moscow diocese within 30 days and to return to Poland.
Pezzi wrote that this text was harmful to Zwolinski personally, to the Kirov parish and to the Moscow Archdiocese.
Zwolinski appealed to the nuncio in Moscow. The nuncio replied that he would pray for him.
Further,
Zwolinski remembers Christmas Eve 2014. After Mass, there was a snack
for the faithful and an opportunity to sing carols.
As the last
of the parishioners were leaving, the bell rang and a strange man, about
40-45 years old, came in around 9pm. Zwolinski invited him in, thinking
he might be looking for help.
But the man introduced himself as a
member of a local gay club. He invited Zwolinski to the club because he
had heard that Catholic priests in the United States visited such
places.
At the next meeting of priests in Moscow, Zwolinski asked
to meet Archbishop Pezzi and told him about this. Pezzi allegedly
replied: "It is normal for priests to go to such clubs".
Zwolinski accused Monsignor Pezzi of surrounding himself with homosexuals.
One
day, among some documents received from the Archdiocese, Zwolinski
found a letter that had been mistakenly included. It was addressed to
one of Pezzi's cronies and read as follows: "Come soon, Kiryusha and
Ilyusha will be here."
Zwolinski also remembers an event about 15
years ago in Kirov. He told a meeting of priests about a provocation
before Christmas by a local homosexual.
His parish was then
deprived of donations for more than ten years. It turned out that this
was done by a priest who frequented homosexual clubs in Moscow and who
worked both as the archdiocese's economist and as the director of a
private bank.
Unlike homosexuals, Pope John Paul II is much less in demand in Moscow.
In
2006, Zwolinski received permission from the former archbishop of
Moscow, Tadeusz Kondrusiewicz, to erect a monument to John Paul II in
Kirov.
But Kondrusiewicz instructed him to report to the new archbishop, Paolo Pezzi, who was appointed in September 2007.
Zwolinski
asked for a personal meeting in January 2008 and informed Pezzi of the
plans for the monument, but was told there was "no need" for such a
monument.
Picture: Paolo Pezzi, © wikicommons CC BY-SA, #newsCgwmlicjxm