_WORLD WATCH______________________________
______________________BELARUS____________________
Deportation reaffirmed
Polish priest remains unwelcome
In the latest twist in the long-running case of the Polish Catholic priest Father Zbigniew Karolak, the presidium of the Brest regional court convened on November 29 and overturned the revocation of his deportation. On November 13 the same court had ruled in favor of the priest in what his lawyer Igor Kabalik described at the time as a “sensational” decision.
Now the court has returned to the ruling of the district court last October that the deportation order issued against the priest last May had been legal, a decision which had been criticized by the procurator. “In the West, when a court rules, the decision is fixed,” Kabalik said. “Here a court can take a decision one day on the basis of materials before it and on the next day can take the opposite decision based on the same materials.”
Kabalik complained that the latest hearing took place in secrecy and he, the priest’s lawyer, had not even been informed; they did not learn about the hearing until December. “Everything took place in accordance with the law,” insisted Nikolai Shiz, a member of the regional court presidium who took part in the hearing. “Lawyers and other persons are allowed to attend initial hearings and appeal hearings, but are not allowed to attend review hearings,” he said.
Kabalik said that the last remaining avenue for Father Karolak to challenge the latest ruling is to take the case to the country’s Supreme Court in Minsk, a decision which he said lies with the head of the Catholic Church in Belarus, Cardinal Kazimierz Swiatek.
Invited by the Pinsk diocese, Father Karolak served as parish priest of the Church of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross in the western Belarusian town of Brest for nine years, but was forced to leave the country in May, ahead of the deportation order issued by the police, after encountering increasing opposition from the Brest office of the government’s Committee for Religious Affairs (CRA) and the prosecutor’s office. The CRA had refused to extend his registration as a priest at the beginning of the year.
Back to Catholic World Report February 2001 Table of Contents