Father Rydzyk: photo - PAP/Tomasz Wojtasik
“I never said that Poland is now a totalitarian state,” Rydzyk told the Nasz Dziennik newspaper, which is part of his media empire encompassing a radio and TV station and is highly influential among many religious and conservative Poles.
Rydzyk was reported to have told a group of MEPs in Brussels last week that Poland was “a totalitarian state” that “had not been ruled by Poles since 1939”.
At the weekend the Foreign Ministry wrote a letter to the Vatican calling for the ultra-catholic Radio Maryja to be brought into line after Rydzyk had “damaged the image of Poland abroad”.
The religious media mogul, however, says his comments have been misreported and taken out of context.
He claimed his remarks to a renewable energy conference in Brussels related to his conflict with the Polish government over obtaining grants to tap into geothermal energy sources on land owned by his Lux Veritatis Foundation in Torun, central Poland.
“I want to remind you that I was invited to Brussels for a conference on renewable energy. While in Brussels, I said that geothermal resources are an enormous opportunity for Poland but said that we are being excluded and discriminated against by the current authorities,” Rydzyk told his Nasz Dziennik newspaper.
“I said that this is totalitarianism. I did not claim that Poland is now a totalitarian state. I meant that the mechanisms and methods of the present government resemble that of a totalitarian state,” Rydzyk added.
In 2007, the then conservative Law and Justice-led coalition government gave Rydzyk’s foundation 12 million zloty (3 million euros) to develop geothermal energy sources which would be used for a spa in Torun where Radio Maryja is based.
Later in 2007, after Civic Platform won the general election, Prime Minister Tusk said that he would be examining any grants which had been given by Law and Justice to Radio Maryja close attention.
Radio Maryja was one of the few media organizations to support Law and Justice in the 2007 election campaign.
Rydzyk has said that he is sorry for any distress caused by the misreporting of his remarks about “totalitarian Poland” but failed to apologise for the remark that “Poles have not ruled Poland since 1939,”, which has been interpreted as meaning that Poland has been run by Jews.
Radio Maryja has been criticised many times in the past for making anti-Semitic statements.
In 2009, a tape of a lecture given by Rydzyk to his media school in Torun contained the claim that the then president Lech Kaczynski was being over influenced by a Jewish lobby in Poland. (pg)