Lawsuit filed against Poland's top bishop after paedophilia remarks

Archbishop Michalik: wikipedia

Malgorzata Marenin, who leads Amnesty International's branch in the city of Kielce as well as the regional wing of the liberal Your Movement party, wants Archbishop Jozef Michalik to pay 2000 zloty [478 euro] to Poland's Centre for Women's Rights.

In the complaint that was sent to the district court in central Wroclaw, south west Poland, Marenin said that “as a representative of the feminist movement and a person who has been through a divorce and is bringing up a child in an incomplete family,” she was “demeaned” by the archbishop's comments.

The row follows accusations of child sex abuse by two Polish priests in the Dominican Republic.

Following the clergyman's remarks to a journalist that the victims of child abuse by priests were often “searching for love” because they were from broken homes, Archbishop Michalik broadened his message during a mass at Wroclaw Cathedral on 17 October.

“No one pays attention to the reasons for this behaviour,” he said, describing them as “pornography, the lack of love between divorcing parents, and the promotion of gender ideology.”

Marenin says that “blaming paedophilia in the Church on children from broken families is a blow for parents who often decide to get a divorce is in order to protect children from the pathological behaviour that is occurring within a family.” (nh/pg)

Source: PAP