Polish leader to meet Pope today

POLAND: Lech Kaczynski flew to Rome yesterday on his first foreign trip as Poland's president, but may have escaped political turmoil at home only to face a papal rebuke at the Vatican.

As the threat of early elections loomed in Poland, Mr Kaczynski made for Italy and today's audience with Pope Benedict, just a fortnight after the Vatican ordered the conservative leader's most vocal supporter to stop meddling in politics.

Catholic broadcaster Radio Maryja is loved by millions of Poles as a voice of traditional values in an age of uncertainty, and loathed by liberals for its religious fundamentalist and nationalist rhetoric.

The station, which is run alongside a similar television channel and newspaper by the controversial Fr Tadeusz Rydzyk, threw its considerable clout behind Mr Kaczynski's bid for office and his party's successful election campaign this autumn.

Political analysts said PiS's wooing of Radio Maryja won it support among the station's three million or so regular listeners and marginalised other right-wing populist parties like the League of Polish Families and the Polish Peasant Party.

But the broadcaster's strident voice on almost all political matters, and controversy surrounding the media empire of Fr Rydzyk, has long irked many members of the Polish clergy and their superiors in the Vatican.

On a visit to the Vatican late last year, Polish bishops asked the Pope for guidance on how to deal with Radio Maryja, whose opinions often differ from those expressed officially by the church through the Conference of the Polish Episcopate.

A public response was issued this month by the apostolic nunciature in Warsaw, the Vatican's representative in Poland, which warned that "institutional activities by clergy . . . that in any way involve the authority of the church require written permission."

Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, one of Poland's most influential clergymen, said the communique was "most certainly" aimed at Radio Maryja which, over its 14-year existence, has become a fracture point for opinion in the Polish church.

"Polish bishops were always divided on the role of the radio station, but this polarisation is more and more evident," said Pawel Boryszewski, a sociologist and expert on religious affairs.

Mr Boryszewski said the failure of Polish priests to heed the Vatican warning may prompt Pope Benedict to raise the issue with Mr Kaczynski today, and take the kind of strong stance on the matter that the late Pope John Paul was unwilling or unable to adopt.

"Benedict XVI has more distance from the Polish church than the Polish pope who, moreover, towards the end of his life was too weak to manage the church's affairs," Mr Boryszewski said.

Any perceived attack on Radio Maryja is likely to sour the attitude of millions of Poles to the German pope, however, and perhaps cast a cloud over his planned visit to Poland in May.

A Vatican clash over the broadcaster would only add to Mr Kaczynski's concerns.

His PiS party has managed to push its 2006 budget through parliament by accepting amendments by populist parties opposed to major reforms, cuts in state spending, and other moves to boost the economy and slash 18 per cent unemployment.

But Jaroslaw Kaczynski - Lech's twin brother and leader of PiS - ruled out the formation of a coalition with such parties, which are suspicious of the European Union and the euro.

"We will not take such an option," he said.

"Therefore, if talks with Civic Platform fail to bring results, early elections are possible. There is no other choice," Mr Kaczynski added.

Civic Platform, the main opposition party and advocate of deep reform, tax cuts and adoption of the euro, has repeatedly failed to accept PiS's terms for a coalition.