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Church to punish 'liberal' priest

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 04.08.2014 16:21
The Church has pledged to take swift action after progressive priest Father Wojciech Lemanski suggested that the older generation of bishops needs 'to die out.'

Father
Father Lemanski. Photo: wikipedia/vetulani

Father Lemanski, whose July 2013 dismissal as vicar of a rural parish near Warsaw was upheld by the Vatican this summer, made the controversial new remarks at the Przystanek Woodstock rock festival over the weekend.

While being interviewed on-stage at the event, the priest was asked if Polish bishops were likely to move with the times.

“Will our bishops change? Probably not,” the priest apparently said.

“When I was at my seminary and we were talking about the ossification of the Church and those bishops who speak to the wall and not to people, one bishop who was my professor said something like this: 'This generation needs to die out.'

“Those are ugly words, but they [the bishops] are beyond changing.

“However, perhaps you, the new generation, will bring new spirit, new enthusiasm, new activity to the Church,” he reflected.

Father Mateusz Dzieduszycki, spokesman of the Warsaw-Praga diocese to which Father Lemanski belongs, told the TVN24 news channel that the Church aims to take swift action as “there is no need for any extensive, lengthy procedures.”

However, he noted that Archbishop Henryk Hoser, head of the diocese, hopes to meet with the priest before the decision is taken.

Father Lemanski was dismissed from his parish in July 2013, after calling on the Church to soften its rhetoric against IVF treatment.

According to Archbishop Hoser, Lemanski was punished for “a lack of respect and obedience to bishops, as well as to the teaching of diocesan bishops in Poland on bioethics issues.”

Lemanski told media outlets at the time that the Church had opposed his involvement in projects promoting dialogue between Poles and Jews, an accusation which the Church vigorously denied.

His dismissal prompted a split among local parishioners, with a group of his supporters protesting to Archbishop Hoser that “during the six years he served as rector... Father Wojciech Lemanski built a community that should be a model for all Poland.”

Father Lemanski was recently allowed to serve as priest at a psychiatric hospital for children in Zagorze, near Warsaw, but he has been forbidden from speaking to the media. (nh)

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