Radio a Thorn in His Side as Pope Tours Poland

On a four-day pilgrimage to this bastion of Catholicism, Pope Benedict XVI is exhorting huge crowds of Poles to cling to their Christian values and traditions, even those “uncomfortable for modern man.”

Among the cheering thousands, one group stands out: supporters of Radio Maryja, a controversial and enormously popular Catholic radio station that has been known to air anti-Semitic and xenophobic views.

Therein lies a dilemma for Benedict, in this most significant foreign journey of his 13-month-old papacy.

With Poland, Benedict has chosen arguably the most devoutly Roman Catholic country in Europe, a nation where churches are still full on Sundays and large numbers of men and women continue to choose religious vocations. The church exercised an enormously important role under long years of communism, helping Poles maintain a unifying solidarity and ultimately galvanizing a pro-democracy opposition.

But now the church, like Polish society itself, is deeply divided, torn between right and left and struggling to find its way in a fast-changing world.

“Stand firm in your faith,” the pope told the nearly quarter of a million people who attended an open-air Mass in Warsaw despite driving rain. “Hand it down to your children, bear witness to the grace which you have experienced so abundantly through the Holy Spirit in the course of your history.”

He urged listeners to resist what he called the modern temptation of “selective interpretation of Sacred Scripture.”

The German-born Benedict is to conclude his Polish visit today with a pilgrimage to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, a gesture intended to leave no doubt as to his zero-tolerance attitude toward anti-Semitism.

The pope’s spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, said Saturday that it was Benedict’s idea to add Auschwitz to the itinerary: “I could not not go,” he quoted the pope as saying.

As he took his message from Warsaw to Krakow and, on Saturday, to Wadowice, the birthplace of his “beloved predecessor,” John Paul II, Benedict attempted to bolster Poland’s Catholicism as a deeply traditional faith that can thrive in spite of secular pressures.

Most problematic for the pope in Poland is that a current of xenophobia and isolationism, including a tendency to oppose deeper integration in Europe, runs through some of the country’s most fervent Catholics. Nowhere is the church’s problem more clearly illustrated than at Radio Maryja, a broadcasting mini-empire founded and run by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk of the Redemptorists missionary order.

“Bless Radio Maryja!” read one prominent banner at the pope’s appearance at Jasna Gora, Poland’s most revered shrine, in the town of Czestochowa.

Radio Maryja has stirred controversy for most of its 14 1/2 -year existence. But in the last year, Polish analysts say, it has aired increasingly strident views, gaining strength from a new right-wing government. The death of John Paul last year may also have loosened the reins on the radio’s penchant for provocation, analysts say.

On a recent show, a commentator who airs frequently accused Jews of running a “Holocaust industry” that blackmails the Polish government by demanding reparations for property confiscated during World War II.

“The anti-Semitism that a year ago was marginal, in the government and elsewhere, is now mainstream,” said Stanislaw Krajewski, a philosophy professor at the University of Warsaw and co-chairman of the Polish Council of Christians and Jews. “It is very disturbing. We have witnessed a great deal of polarization.”

The Vatican has sought to tone down Radio Maryja, ordering it last month to refrain from politics, and the Polish Bishops’ Conference announced formation of a committee to oversee the broadcaster. But the bishops disagree among themselves and have not proved effective in controlling Rydzyk.

The station’s defenders argue that some of the more objectionable comments have come from guest analysts, politicians and listeners who phone in and can’t be controlled.

Radio Maryja, which has one of the largest listening audiences in the country, appeals to older Poles, the rural and less educated, and others who feel left behind by the rapid post-communist transformation.

It also has become a staunch supporter of Poland’s conservative, heavily Catholic government. The Law and Justice Party, run by twin brothers, came to power late last year, thanks in part to the radio’s mobilization of sympathetic voters. And in recent weeks, the ruling coalition headed by their party welcomed two highly nationalistic smaller parties whose leaders are openly hostile to the European Union, which Poland joined two years ago.

Top ministers in the government use Radio Maryja to publicize their opinions and policies without serious questioning or challenge. Mainstream Catholic news agencies, secular media, diplomats, moderates in the church and others worry that the relationship is dangerous.

Asked how Benedict might handle Radio Maryja, Navarro-Valls said Saturday that it was a local matter that Polish bishops would have to resolve. Zbigniew Nosowski, a commentator and editor of a liberal Catholic magazine, said he believed Benedict was already sending a subtle message.

“His strategy as a pastor is, rather than show up the problems, to concentrate on and strengthen the good,” Nosowski said. “The same way that psychologists heal, by emphasizing the good.”

Benedict has made a point in Poland of casting devout faith as spiritual rather than political, an admonition that Nosowski and others believed was directed at Radio Maryja.

In a meeting with clerics in Warsaw, the pope said, “The priest is not asked to be an expert in economics, construction or politics. He is expected to be an expert in the spiritual life.” And he urged aspiring priests and nuns at the Jasna Gora shrine to spread God’s word “in a mature way, not childishly or aggressively,” without attracting attention to the messenger as opposed to the message.

With the fall of communism, the church has had to carve out a new status, with strong disagreement between conservatives and more progressive priests over how to ward off the perceived sins of Western secularism, including gay marriage and abortion rights, and preserve Polish tradition without falling back into insular hatreds.

The challenge is “to teach Christian values but to use modern language ... so that Poland can show how Christian values can exist in the contemporary world,” said Hanna Suchocka, a former Polish prime minister and current ambassador to the Holy See.

The church in Poland has been largely rudderless since the death of John Paul, who had essentially guided it from Rome. In addition, having been trapped for so many years behind the Iron Curtain, some factions of the Polish church, analysts say, may remain caught in a time warp, having failed to internalize some of the more progressive doctrines, especially with regard to Jewish-Catholic relations.

Benedict returned Saturday night to his essential theme, telling hundreds of thousands of Poles, most of them young people, who gathered in a Krakow meadow that they can live a life dedicated to Christ even if they are ridiculed.

“Maybe it is easier to base one’s life on the shifting sands of one’s own worldview,” he said. “Be assured that he who builds [his life] this way is not prudent.... My friends, do not be afraid to lean on Christ! Long for Christ, as the foundation of your life!”