POLAND
Telegraph (UK)
By Matthew Day, Warsaw1:26PM BST 18 Oct 2013
The head of Poland’s Catholic Church has been attacked for suggesting that child abuse resulted from pornography.
It is the second time in as many weeks that the opinions of Archbishop Jozef Michalik have sparked outrage. Last week he was forced to apologise for saying sexual abuse by priests occurred because children from broken homes “were looking for love”.
In his latest controversial comments the archbishop said abuse stemmed from homes broken on pornography, “selfish” love and “the ideology of gender that raises legitimate concerns, because it goes against the laws of nature, promotes marriage between persons of the same sex and fights for the right to legalize adoption of children by these couples.”
A series of recent child sex abuse scandals involving priests has sent the Polish Catholic Church reeling and scrambling to regain its position but the archbishop’s comments appearing to try to deflect the blame from the perpetrators onto modern society or even the victims themselves provoked a furious backlash.
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