Jaroslaw Kaczynski protests outside Presidential Palace during cross conflict; photo PAPOpposition leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski has accused President Bronislaw Komorowski of being an enemy of the Roman Catholic church in Poland, in a row over alleged church property restitution bribes and malpractice.
“Why didn’t Bronislaw Komorowski reveal that he is the Church’s enemy during the presidential campaign?,” said Kaczynski, blaming the ruling Civic Platform, which Komorowski is associated with, for what he sees as the hounding the Catholic Church in Poland.
Jaroslaw Kaczynski has accused Bronislaw Komorowski of launching an anti-Church campaign, which he says started with the president ordering the removal of the Smolensk cross from outside of the Presidential Palace to a nearby church.
The conflict over the cross pitted secularists against the devout in Poland and Kaczynski sees President Komorowski, the ruling Civic Platform and leftist opposition parties, as coordinating an attack on the faithful.
His most recent comments were prompted by an alleged corruption scandal concerning the Property Commission, which is in charge of returning property seized from the Church during communist rule.
Dodgy deals?
In September, the Catholic Church’s plenipotentiary was arrested on suspicion of bribing a member of the Property Commission. The scandal also revealed a series of irregularities connected with compensation for property stolen by the communists.
The Church is accused of frequently underrating the value of land which was to be returned to it, and as a result received more land, and of a higher value, than it possessed before the communist regime took power after WW II.
Many diocese which regained seized property sold it on, making huge profits. St. Brother Albert order, for example, in exchange for 69-ha of land seized from the order under the communism, received twenty times more land (1500 ha), worth over 73 million zloty (18 million euro).
Democratic Left Alliance (SLD) MP Slawomir Kopycinski, who claims that members of the commission repeatedly overstepped their powers, has laid a motion at the Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the Property Commission.
“The Commission has been operating for over twenty years in an illegal and uncontrollable manner,” said Kopycinski. The MP called the commission’s activity a “plunder” and “the biggest corruption scandal in Poland’s history.”
Since its establishment in 1989, the Property Commission returned about 60 ha of land and 490 buildings worth over 24 billion zloty (6 billion euro) to the Polish Catholic Church.
That President Komorowski has not rushed to the side of the Roman Catholic church on the issue is proof to Jaroslaw Kaczynski that the head of state is silent as the religious in Poland are being persecuted. (pg/mg)
Source: Rzeczpospolita/PAP