Radio Maryja founder in transsexual MP row

Janusz Palikot, leader of the liberal Palikot's Movement party has said that “priests are often oafs”, after prominent clergyman and religious media mogul Father Tadeusz Rydzyk mocked Poland's first transsexual MP.

“The Polish provincial priest is often an uneducated simpleton, which paves the way for this type of comment,” Palikot told commercial radio station Radio Zet on Tuesday.

Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, owner of the ultra-conservative Radio Maryja, had earlier described Anna Grodzka - Poland's first transsexual MP and a member of Palikot's Movement – as “an abnormality.”

The clergyman was responding to Janusz Palikot's announcement that he would complain to the MPs' Ethics Committee (KEP), after Jan Dziedziczak, an MP from the conservative Law and Justice party (PiS) called Anna Grodzka “Sir” instead of “Madam”.

“By a slip of the tongue, an MP said 'Sir' to a man who at the age of 56, called himself a woman, and started to act like a woman, and he is taken to the Ethics Committee,” Father Rydzyk complained.

“People, where are we?” Rydzyk asked.

“Let's be normal," he added. "Let's have a truly Catholic Poland.”

Janusz Palikot claimed that the Church does not criticise comments such as Father Rydzyk's, as the head of the Polish Episcopate, Archbishop Jozef Michalik, is “the same type of oaf as Rydzyk.” (nh/pg)