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Poland
Presidential scandal
Tape shows president mocking Pope
Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski easily won re-election despite last-minute revelations of a videotape released by an opponent just weeks before the vote showing him mocking Pope John Paul II.
The televised incident was part of a television advertisement by election rival Marian Krzaklewski of Solidarity. The commercial shows Kwasniewski’s national security adviser, Marek Siwiec, making the sign of the cross as he leaves a helicopter in a 1997 trip. Kwasniewski is heard off-camera asking, “Has the minister kissed the soil?” in apparent reference to Pope John Paul II’s custom of kissing the soil of the receiving country during his papal journeys.
“These incidents . . . contradict the president’s constitutional duty to safeguard the dignity of the nation. His attitude hurts the relations between Poland and the Vatican,” a group of Polish senators said in reaction. Some groups demanded a criminal investigation on the grounds that the incident offended their religion, a potential violation of Polish law.
“We felt the behavior of both politicians (Kwasniewski and Siwiec) derided the Catholic faith, its symbols, and the Pope,” members of the Solidarity trade union from the northeastern town of Bialystok said in a complaint to prosecutors. Kwasniewski, a former Communist, does not attend a church but has repeatedly stated his devotion to the Polish-born Pope during his five years in office. The scandal could have had dire effects for the president during the elections in Poland—where most people are devout Catholics and the Holy Father is a revered figure—but Kwasniewski easily won re-election with 55 percent of the vote.
The Holy Father enjoys immense popularity among his countrymen of whom more than 90 percent are Catholic. The president repeated his apologies for the incident but said the ad was a “manipulation” that imposed an anti-papal meaning which the incident never had. “It has never been the intention . . . of Siwiec, nor anyone from his circle, to offend the Pope or the Catholic Church in Poland,” Kwasniewski told the public radio station Trojka.
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