Polish bishops set up council to rein in radio

POLAND: Polish bishops have established a governing council to tame the controversial broadcasts of religious station Radio Maryja.

The station has stirred up controversy in Poland and abroad for mixing religious broadcasting with commentary of an anti-Semitic and homophobic nature.

But it was the station's open political support for the ruling conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS) that prompted two recent expressions of "grave concern" from the Vatican to Polish bishops.

The Polish episcopate is unable to act directly to bring the station into line because it is run by Fr Tadeusz Rydzyk, a priest from the Redemptorist order.

After a stormy meeting in a monastery in southern Poland, Polish bishops released a statement saying that the station would in future be overseen by a new programme council set up in agreement with the Redemptorists and headed by Fr Waclaw Depo, the dogmatic rector of a seminary in Radom, near Warsaw.

Archbishop Jozef Glemp, the Polish primate, said that in future Radio Maryja would be "open to pointers from the episcopate".

Another bishop said the agreement would ensure Radio Maryja "isn't connected with any political faction".

The archbishops expressed thanks in their statement for the "huge evangelising work" of the station, which has a mostly rural audience of between one and three million Poles.

It remains to be seen whether the new council will rein in the broadcasts of Radio Maryja and the influence of Fr Rydzyk. He is a regular voice on air, phoning in his contributions, such as his notorious remark that the EU was a masonic plot to force gay marriage on Poland.

He issued a statement yesterday calling Radio Maryja the "voice of truth" hit by an "incredible tsunami of manipulation . . . from the liberal and leftist media in Europe and the world".

The Polish bishops said in their statement they had no influence on the future of Fr Rydzyk and said that was a matter for the Redemptorist order.

"The episcopate did what it had to do but it doesn't end the case of Radio Maryja . . . we cannot rule out that Fr Rydzyk will be removed from his position," said Adam Boniecki, editor of weekly Catholic intellectual newspaper Tygodnik Powszechny.