Showing posts with label Thomas Lukaszuk. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Thomas Lukaszuk. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 7, 2020

Is Bergoglio Going After Poland's Radio Maryja Next?




Radio Maryja, the idiosyncratic Catholic radio station in Poland, is a thorn in the side of some.

(Rome) Since in Poland the Catholic national conservative party Law and Justice (PiS) is in power, the country is "under observation" by the EU. In Brussels, political forces set the tone, which are much further to the left and can hardly stand it when the sovereign electorate chooses other political forces. In turn, the EU Commission, the EU Parliament or the EU jurisdiction and, of course, the Western media, both Poland's and Hungary's government are disparaged as a "dirty children" of the "community."  The aim of the permanent pressure is either to induce the government to give in or to urge the electorate to choose a government to the left. Does the Vatican also participate in this under Pope Francis?

Specifically, it's about the radio station Radio MaryjaIn 1991, soon after the end of Communist rule, a launched station was started that was modeled upon Radio Maria Italy . The founder and program director is the Redemptorist, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk. With the so-called “world family” of the Radio Maria stations, however, there was a split in the mid-1990s. In the Federal Republic of Germany in particular, efforts were made to keep a distance because of a different approach to one's own history. Radio Maryja is one of the five most listened to channels in Poland. In contrast to the other Radio Maria stations,  Fr. Rydzyk  pursued - since Poland had just over 40 years of an anti-church Communist dictatorship -   a political line and cultivated clearer language.

This was mainly due to the fact that the dictatorship had been overcome, but that the former Communist rulers outside the government and parliament were still at many levers, not least in the judiciary. Under the changed name, they even briefly returned to power in the 1990s. The way to overcome the dictatorship personally and above all, spiritually proved to be long and rocky.

The radio station, to which the TV station TV Trwam now belongs, supports the PiS without, however, becoming dependent. From left media, especially the left-liberal Gazeta Wyborcza, has repeatedly campaigned against the channel. A look at the German Wikipedia page provides an insight into this.
But the Church hierarchy was not always happy with the broadcaster, which has more to do with its independent willfulness. Pope Benedict XVI congratulated Radio Maryja on its 20th anniversary.
The leftist opposition in Poland, but also outside, is a thorn in the side because of its Catholic and conservative positions and even more because of its influence on public opinion. The most recent attempt to silence the transmitter has just started.

According to Wirtualna Polska, a mainstream medium owned by France Telecom, a request to the Vatican Secretariat of State was sent in December 2019 on "limiting" the political positioning of Radio MaryjaThe transmitter should have a purely "religious character."
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The initiators of the claim, an Adam N. and a Witek M., remain anonymous. They sent their petition to the Vatican in several languages through Canadian middlemen. Wirtualna Polska is one of the mass media, of which Radio Maryja has been attacked in the past. In 2018, a Warsaw court sentenced the online portal to apologize to P. Rydzyk for spreading false allegations.

According to La Fede Quotidiana the request to the Vatican to proceed against Radio Maryja  was treated on March 26 by Pope Francis. He asked Msgr. Roberto Cona of the Secretary of State to review the matter and prepare a response.

A central role in the new attack on the conservative radio station is played by the Polish-Canadian politician Thomas Lukaszuk who actively supported the petition against Radio MaryjaThe internet portal onet.pl , with good connections to Lukaszuk, promoted the petition to the Vatican for a long time last year. Onet.pl is largely owned by Ringier Axel Springer Media AG and is comparable to Web.de and Gmx.at in the left- justification of news reporting .

Lukaszuk's father had fled to Canada from Communist Poland. In 1982 his family was also able to follow him. Thomas Lukaszuk was a member of Parliament in Alberta from 2001 to 2015. From 2010 to 2014, he was Minister of the Government of the Canadian state, including 2012/2013 as Deputy Prime Minister.



Text: Giuseppe Nardi
Image: Radio Maryja (screenshot)
Trans: Tancred vekron99@hotmail.com
AMDG