Sponsored Links

Polish priest's dismissal exposes rift over dialogue with Jews

Thu Aug 1, 2013 7:09am EDT

* Church says Father Lemanski sacked for insubordination

* Priest says 1943 massacre inspired him to seek better ties with Jews

* Relations with Jews still sensitive issue in Poland

By Dagmara Leszkowicz

JASIENICA, Poland, Aug 1 (Reuters) - When the outspoken Polish priest Wojciech Lemanski returned with his parishioners to his church near Warsaw after holding a prayer vigil at the Treblinka Nazi death camp in early July, a dismissal notice awaited him.

The Warsaw diocese of the Roman Catholic Church sacked Lemanski as parish priest in the small village of Jasienica for what it said was his insubordination after numerous clashes on issues such as in-vitro fertilisation, abortion and his engagement with the Jewish community.

Lemanski sealed his fate when in a radio interview he accused Archbishop Henryk Hoser, who oversees his parish, of asking whether he was a Jew and circumcised - a charge the diocese has denied.

The episode exposed a rift within the church, as it struggles to retain a central role in Polish life, between conservatives and those who want more openness in dealing with social issues and some of the darker episodes in Poland's past.

"At a time when Pope Francis is calling for open-mindedness, the church in Poland is crawling into its shell," said Iwona Jakubowska-Branicka, a sociologist at Warsaw University.

"As with many moral issues, the question of relations with Jews has been swept under the carpet," she said.

Relations with the Jewish community are an especially difficult subject in Poland, where millions of Jews perished in the Holocaust during the Nazi German occupation of the country.

Most of those who survived were forced to leave in the late 1960s by the communist regime. Poland's post-communist leaders have condemned the "anti-Zionist campaign" of that time and have often spoken out against other signs of anti-Semitism.

"SPECIAL SENSITIVITY"

Poles have celebrated those compatriots who helped to save local Jews in World War Two, but they have also downplayed events such as the burning of 340 Jews by Polish peasants in the village of Jedwabne in 1943.

The episode was buried by the communist authorities after the war and resurfaced only after a 2001 book written by Polish-born U.S. historian Jan Gross described the massacre.

The publication was criticised by some Catholic church leaders as stoking anti-Polish and anti-Jewish sentiments, but the subsequent debate inspired young Lemanski to work on improving the dialogue between the two groups.

"God knocked on my door and said he wanted something more from me. I can't imagine being a priest without a special sensitivity for the Jews, their tragedies and a need for dialogue," the priest said in an interview.

Lemanski is among a few Catholic priests who commemorate the massacre each year with Jewish leaders and holds prayer vigils at the Treblinka camp, one of the infamous Nazi death factories where Jews, along with Poles and others, were gassed.

He also recovered gravestones from abandoned and destroyed Jewish cemeteries, incorporating two of them into the main alter of his church. That move stoked charges from some conservative Catholics that he was turning it into a synagogue.

In a statement explaining its decision to send Lemanski on early retirement, the Warsaw Diocese did not refer to the gravestones, but said he had failed to get church permission on issues related to the parish.

The diocese also said Archbishop Hoser's relations with the Jewish community were "proper and full of trust".

Church representatives declined further comment.

Jewish community leaders have avoided being pulled into the affair, but some have expressed support for Lemanski's efforts.

"I can say one thing: looking at the way parishioners treat the priest, I think that if the Jewish community had had a rabbi like Lemanski, the community would have been very pleased," said Piotr Kadlcik, head of the Union of Jewish Religious Communities in Poland.

Despite being sidelined by his superiors, Lemanski said he would remain active after lodging an appeal with the Vatican.

"I realise it's not an easy path but I don't feel like someone on the margin of the church. On the contrary, I feel like I'm in the centre of my church because without this dialogue our church loses its authority," he said. (Editing by Gareth Jones)

 
We welcome comments that advance the story through relevant opinion, anecdotes, links and data. If you see a comment that you believe is irrelevant or inappropriate, you can flag it to our editors by using the report abuse links. Views expressed in the comments do not represent those of Reuters. For more information on our comment policy, see http://blogs.reuters.com/fulldisclosure/2010/09/27/toward-a-more-thoughtful-conversation-on-stories/
Comments (2)
I see no alleged Jewish rift with the Catholic Church here other than the priest making an outrageous claim against his boss of apparently wanting to know, after decades, if he’s been circumsized? If that’s true or not, why go public with that bizarre comment?

Aug 01, 2013 9:55am EDT  --  Report as abuse
mortimerzilch wrote:
the article above does not clarify the real problem associated with the priest-bishop relationship. It may be the priest is using the issue of the Jews (and the active, and complicit, role the Catholic population of Poland played in their genocide) to prop up with a sense of validity his other activities which are more clearly both disobedient to the bishop AND theologically un-orthodox. I think so. Certainly the question of the war-time treatment of the Jews by Pols is rife with nightmarish circumstances. Recent revelations have served only to incriminate further the general population; rather than relieve fears of complicity with the Nazis, events show an ever greater cooperation than was previously known. Not only the terrible crime mentioned in this article, but the new knowledge of “neighborhood concentration camps” that were small and localized throughout many towns, indicate a much broader execution of the Nazi “final solution,” but also, a much deeper participation by Catholic Poland. Thank God that Pope John-Paul II was an active member of the Polish Underground, even, according to first hand reports, acting as an Executioner of Nazis in the years before his miraculous rescue from death (when he was run over the truck when the Nazis recognized him) – which he attributed to Our Lady of Fatima. Without John Paul II there would be no counterbalancing context with which to view the actions of the general Polish population. Now, with World Youth Day being designated next for Poland, all these issues will continue to draw tighter and tighter together. Thank God too that this priest has appealed to Rome…the answer, when it comes, may prove enlightening.

Aug 01, 2013 10:32am EDT  --  Report as abuse