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Pope Criticizes Polish Catholic Radio
A Polish Catholic radio network has come under fire from the Vatican and from Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to Poland when he made a veiled reference to Radio Maryja on Thursday. Saying that the church should stay out of politics, the Pope declared in an address at St. John's Cathedral in Warsaw: "The priest is not asked to be an expert in economics, construction or politics. He is expected to be an expert in the spiritual life." His remarks echoed those of Pope John Paul II, who warned his native country in 1993 to avoid entangling the church in partisan politics -- advice that was taken to heart by previous governments. According to the Washington Post, Pope Benedict's remarks followed a Vatican statement last month expressing "grave concern" over the operations of the radio service and its close relationship with the government.
Story Continues Below The statement, the Post reported, came shortly after a Radio Maryja political commentator accused Jews of profiting from "the Holocaust business" and complained that Jewish groups were "humiliating Poland internationally by demanding money" as compensation for property confiscated during World War II. Such comments, critics told the Post, were merely the latest example of the network encouraging anti-Semitic sentiments in Poland and have called on the church to shut it down. The Post reported that Marek Edelman, a prominent survivor of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, wrote a letter to parliamentary leaders accusing Radio Maryja of a pattern of "xenophobia, chauvinism and anti-Semitism." The Post wrote that to date "Polish church officials have shown little inclination to tone down the broadcasts," and added that Bishops in Warsaw note that the network is operated by Catholic priests from the Redemptorist order and is therefore not under their direct control.
In response to the Vatican's criticism, however, the bishops formed a council to work with the Redemptorists to advise the network on programming, but also issued a statement praising Radio Maryja for its "great evangelizing work."
Accused of hostility toward Jews, gays and the former communists who ruled the country until recently, the network reaches an estimated audience of some 4 million Poles, mostly, the Post claims, being "rural, elderly Catholics" who allegedly "feel left behind by the free-market transformation of the country since the fall of the Iron Curtain." Radio Maryja's political allies, however, have rallied to its side," according to the Post, which reports that Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Law and Justice party leader and the country's top power broker, condemned critics of the network as "enemies of freedom" and accused them of trying to stifle an independent media voice. Wojciech Wierzejski, a member of Parliament and deputy chairman of the League of Polish Families, told the Post that Radio Maryja's enemies were trying to tame a popular network by asserting that it is a tool of the government. "The question of Radio Maryja is raised mostly by free-market and leftist groups, the post-communists," he added. "These people are usually against the church and not Radio Maryja itself." Tadeusz Rydzyk, the Redemptorist priest who founded Radio Maryja, apologized to listeners last month if they were offended by the broadcast accused of being anti-Semitic. Otherwise the network's management isn't backing down. Stanislaw Michalkiewicz, the commentator who criticized the American Jewish Committee and World Jewish Congress for "humiliating" Poland, is still on the air. In an interview, he said he wasn't reprimanded or told to modify his remarks, which he denied were anti-Semitic. "I saw no grounds and no reason to apologize," he said. "Nobody tried to discredit any word that I actually said." "Accusing me of anti-Semitism was just a way of changing the subject," he said. "My program became a pretext to attack Radio Maryja, because the existence of Radio Maryja is a problem to some groups in this country." Editor's note:
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