POLAND
Vatican Insider
Mgr. Hoser has accused Fr. Lemański of being too philo-Semitic
MAREK LEHNERT
ROME
Not even Poland seems to be a “normal” country. The story you about about to read should be described as the tale of a relatively young priest who is full of enthusiasm for the faith and sometimes deaf to the words of his elderly, conservative and old-fashioned bishop. Instead, the story starring Fr. Wojciech Lemański, the 52 year old parish priest of Jasienica near Poland’s capital Warsaw and Henryk Hoser, the 70 year old Ordinary of the Archdiocese of Warszawa-Praga (located in the East part of Warsaw), has the whole of Poland on tenterhooks, when it should be focused on preparing for John Paul II’s imminent canonization.
The friction between Fr. Lemański and his bishop has nothing to do with age but with certain key issues. Artificial insemination (in vitro fertilisation is the preferred term in Poland) tops the list of these issues. One day the parish priest of Jasienica went around publicly apologising to all those who were born thanks to this method and expressed his regret when one of these people – a young woman – left the Catholic Church because she felt rejected. Polish bishops condemned his action outright.
The rebel priest’s bishop who is one of the main opponents of in vitro fertilisation gave him a major telling-off for defending his position on television. Fr. Lemański also complained about the hard line taken against paedophile priests and in church preached against the closed-mindedness of parish members, particularly with regard to the fear of foreigners and anti-Semitism.
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