24 July 2007
Tadeusz Rydzyk, founder and director of the ultra-Catholic ‘Radio Maryja’ station in Poland, has rejected accusations that he is an anti-Semite. The priest’s church superiors have voiced support for the embattled clergyman and said that accusations leveled against him were defamatory. Earlier this month, the ‘Wprost’ news magazine had reported that in a lecture to journalism students, Rydzyk had described Jews as greedy and that he had lambasted Poland’s president Lech Kaczynski for donating land in Warsaw to build a Jewish museum. The comments generated strong rebukes from liberal Catholics in Poland and leading Jewish rights groups abroad.
On Monday, Rydzyk denied the charges of anti-Semitism, and said he "did not intend to offend anybody. I emphasize that I never speak out against people, especially because of their religious affiliation, race, society," he said in a statement, adding: "One cannot say that the actions of ‘Radio Maryja’, mine included, were or are anti-Semitic."
The Rome-based Redemptorist order, to which Rydzyk belongs, voiced support for the controversial priest. In a statement, the order's chief representative in Poland, Zdzislaw Klafka, dismissed the allegations of anti-Semitism and questioned the authenticity of the tapes published by ‘Wprost’. “The Reverend Rydzyk does not identify himself with the anti-Semitism attributed to him, and as fellow clergymen who know him, we know that this is an attitude foreign to him,” Klafka said in the statement, which he said was agreed to by the order's chief in Rome, the superior-general Joseph W. Tobin.
A local prosecutor in Torun, Poland, was reportedly examining the accusations, and his office indicated that he would decide in August whether or not to prosecute Rydzyk for the alleged statements. Last week, former Polish prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and former foreign minister Wladyslaw Bartoszewski led a group of over 700 people who signed an open letter complaining that public statements by Rydzyk had "revealed his contempt" for Jews and his intolerance toward political opponents. Describing the priest's public statements as "contemptible," the letter’s signatories asked Catholic church leaders to take action to curtail the public influence of the Redemptorist priest.
