POLAND
News 24

Warsaw – A high-profile row between a charismatic rebel priest and the bishop who fired him has sparked controversy in heavily Catholic Poland, a sign of the tension within its changing church.

Father Wojciech Lemanski, aged 53, was sacked as parish priest in the eastern village of Jasienica after speaking out on his blog against the Polish episcopate’s censure of test-tube babies, abortion, euthanasia and contraception.

Henryk Hoser, archbishop of Warsaw-Praga, faulted Lemanski for “a lack of respect and disobedience” and said his outburst “caused great damage to and confusion in the heart of the Church community”.

An influential figure in the Polish church, Hoser is a physician and president of the episcopate’s committee on bioethics, which looks at controversial advances in medicine and biology.

“This is a new stage in the confrontation between an open church and a closed one,” said Stanislaw Obirek, a Warsaw-based…