A Roman Catholic archbishop was listed as an agent for the former communist-era secret service, according to an official from a government institute that is making the service's files public.
Jan Sokol, now the head of the Bratislava-Trnava archdiocese, was registered by the secret service as an agent in the spring of 1989, just months before he was appointed archbishop in then-communist Czechoslovakia, Miroslav Lehky of the Institute of the National Memory said in a telephone interview Thursday.
Prior to that, the service had marked Sokol as a "candidate for cooperation" for many years, Lehky said.
Sokol's office issued a statement Thursday, saying the archbishop was disturbed by the allegations that he was involved with the secret service.
"It is an attempt to damage the trust in the church, which during the years of the communist dominance managed to stand on the side of truth despite great sacrifices," the statement said.
Lehky said the files covering the western part of Slovakia and the capital, Bratislava — including the one on Sokol — will be released to the public within months. He said the list of the service's cooperators "was trustworthy."
He added that only additional research would reveal more details about the alleged cooperation.
Under communism, which ended in late 1989, Slovakia was part of Czechoslovakia. The country split peacefully into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
In its Thursday edition, newspaper Sme reported that the head of the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, Metropolitan Nikolaj, was also listed as an agent for the service in files which have already been released.
He was registered as an agent in 1984, Sme reported without giving details on his alleged cooperation. The church would not comment on the issue.
The institute started to release files of agents of the former communist secret police as well as citizens who were persecuted in Slovakia, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, last November.