Croatian TV re-employs woman sacked over divorce

CROATIA: Television chiefs in deeply Catholic Croatia have reinstated a sign-language interpreter who was barred from translating Mass because she divorced her husband.

Dubravka Naumovski worked at Croatia's state television for four years before Fr Tonci Trstenjak, its head of religious programming, sacked her because of alleged complaints from the public over her decision to leave her husband.

"Since last Monday, we have been swamped with calls from viewers who were protesting about how a person with an improper private life could interpret a Mass," Fr Trstenjak told Croatia's Jutarni List newspaper.

"I believe that people who interpret Holy Mass should take care that their life is in accordance with the expectations of those who watch it."

His decision sparked a furious response from Ms Naumovski, who called her dismissal "an interference in my private life. I do not conduct Mass, I just interpret it". It also prompted an angry rebuke from rights groups used to doing battle with Croatia's often-strident Catholic Church, which wields great influence in a country where almost 90 per cent of the population are avowed Catholics.

"In Croatia, the right to divorce is protected by law and it is absolutely unacceptable that Christian fundamentalism is trying to be imposed on public television," said Zarko Puhovski, head of the Croatian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights.

Pressure from domestic critics and the disapproval of the EU, which Croatia hopes to join as soon as possible, prompted a swift turnaround from television bosses.

The management board of the station said it could not "accept the reasons due to which the editor of religious programmes, Tonci Trstenjak, cancelled co-operation with Dubravka Naumovski. Reasons for dismissal should be based on professional criteria", the board said.

Croatia's Catholic Church has in the past successfully protested against yoga classes in school and against an Aids-prevention programme that was teaching students how to use condoms.

It is currently leading efforts to close shops on Sundays.

But it has also come under scrutiny for allegedly trying to cover up child abuse at an orphanage run by Catholic charity Caritas.