Less than two days after becoming archbishop of ­Warsaw, Stanislaw Wielgus on Sunday resigned at the request of the Vatican ­following revelations that he had agreed in the 1970s to co-operate with Poland’s communist-era secret police.

The resignation came during a ceremonial mass that had been planned to welcome the archbishop.

Dressed in flowing gold robes, Archbishop Wielgus stood by the altar of the cathedral of St John the Baptist and read out a statement that ended: “I have tendered my resignation from the post of archbishop and metropolitan of Warsaw.” He then stood, folding his glasses as the cathedral erupted with yells of “No. No. No,” and “Stay with us,” interspersed with calls of “Shame.”

The shattered-looking archbishop later sat fighting back tears as he was defended by Cardinal Jozef Glemp, who has retaken ­control of the Warsaw archdiocese.

The cardinal said the archbishop was a “servant of God” who had been unfairly sentenced based on third-hand evidence and “scraps of paper”. He continued by condemning the tens of thousands of former secret police officers who are now in good jobs.

Archbishop Wielgus officially took over the Warsaw archdiocese on Friday afternoon, in spite of growing evidence that he had signed two papers in the 1970s promising to co-operate with security services. The documents were found in the microfilmed files kept by the state detailing decades of efforts by the regime to investigate anti-communist activists.

A special police department dealt with the church and every effort was made to coerce and co-opt priests, who were seen as representing an institution counter to the interests of the atheistic dictatorship.

The archbishop made his predicament worse by insisting he had not informed for the communists, only to back down and issue a plea for forgiveness on Friday evening. The outcry over his past grew over the weekend with one fellow archbishop, Tadeusz Goclowski of Gdansk, saying he would not be attending the ceremonial mass.

Many observers felt the Vatican had not vetted the archbishop carefully enough before nominating him to Poland’s most prestigious religious office. There were concerns he would not be able to govern the diocese and could hurt the church’s prestige in overwhelmingly Catholic Poland.

Fr Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, de-fended the request for the archbishop’s resignation on the grounds that his behaviour in the communist era had “gravely compromised his authority”.

He predicted it would probably not be the last case in which communist police files would be used to discredit clergymen, but added: “It must not be forgotten that such material was produced by functionaries of an oppressive and blackmailing regime.”

The Polish church estimates about 10 per cent of its priests informed for the communists.