Sep. 05 (CWNews.com) - The Soviet Union recruited informers at the Vatican to spy on Pope John Paul II, Cardinal Joseph Glemp of Warsaw told the Italian ANSA news agency.
 
 "There were spies inside the Vatican," the Polish primate told ANSA. "Moscow was extremely interested in what was going on in Rome, now that a Polish Pope was in office."
 
 Cardinal Glemp said that "every priest Poland" was carefully monitored by government authorities during the Communist era. "Nobody escaped the surveillance," he said. "There was a dossier for each one of us in the offices of the intelligence agencies."
 
 In recent years, the opening of archives amassed by the Communist government has confirmed that spies collected volumes of information about Church officials.
 
 Some Catholic priests were recruited to provide information about their colleagues; others were unwitting collaborators, providing information to acquaintances without realizing that they were government agents.
 
 The Institute for National Remembrance, established to make an accounting for the Communist era, estimates that about 10% of all Polish priests were used-- with or without their knowledge-- as sources.
 
 "The documentation from the secret police on Polish priests was enormous," Cardinal Glemp said. "Thousands and thousands of documents. If you put all the dossiers in a row it would stretch for miles."
 
 Last year the Institute for National Remembrance charged that Father Konrad Hejmo, a Polish Dominican priest stationed in Rome, had been on the payroll of the Polish secret policy, providing information about the Pontiff.
 
 Father Hejmo-- who did not work at the Vatican, and did not have access to secret information-- denied that he knowingly cooperated with Communist authorities. But he did say that Pope John Paul was keenly aware of the likelihood that he was being watched. During a meeting with Polish priests in Rome, Father Hejmo recalled, the Pope made it clear "he knew he was being spied on."
 
 At the time the accusations against Father Hejmo were first aired, Polish Cardinal Andrezej Maria Deskur, a close friend of the late Pontiff, said that the accusations were "absurd, inexplicable." But Cardinal Glemp gave ANSA a different perspective.
 
 "Certainly he was a spy," he said, referring to Father Hejmo. After having inspected the documents made public last year, he said, "personally I am convinced."
 
 Cardinal Glemp spoke to ANSA from Assisi, Italy, where he was speaking at the 20th Inter-religious Meeting of Prayer for Peace, organized by the St. Egidio community.