Activists in Poland have pulled down a statue of a disgraced late priest after mounting allegations that he sexually abused minors.

They acted under cover of night early Thursday to make a protest about the failure of the Polish church to deal with the problem of abuse.

Video footage shows three men attaching a rope around the statue of Mgr. Henryk Jankowski in Gdansk and then pulling it down. Jankowski was a prominent priest of the Solidarity pro-democracy movement in the 1980s who died in 2010.

The private broadcaster TVN24 reported the three were arrested.

Their action comes as church leaders gather at the Vatican to grapple with the sex abuse crisis in the church.