Radio Maryja

File:RadioMaryjaSign.jpg

Signs such as this one in Łagów are a common sight in rural Poland, indicating the local frequency of the station.

The Radio Maryja studios in Toruń.

Radio Maryja is a conservative Catholic radio station, founded in Toruń, Poland, on December 9, 1991, and directed by Father Tadeusz Rydzyk. Radio Maryja supported the victorious Law and Justice party and Lech Kaczyński during the parliamentary and presidential elections in Poland in 2005. The name "Maryja" is a traditional form of the name "Mary", referring to Mary, mother of Jesus by the Polish Roman Catholic community.

Evangelization

Religious programs on Radio Maryja:

• rosary - three times daily
• talking about The Cathechism of the Catholic Church - three times daily
• transmission of the Holy Mass every day
• breviary three-four times daily
• transmissions of the Pope's pilgrimages
• Chaplet of Divine Mercy
• the unction to The Black Madonna of Częstochowa

Pilgrimages

The Radio Maryja Family ("Rodzina Radia Maryja"), an organization formed from the radio station's listeners, holds a pilgrimage to Częstochowa every year. This year (2006) 200,000 members of the Radio Maryja Family visited Jasna Góra in Częstochowa.

The Radio Maryja Family visited the Vatican and met Pope John Paul II in 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997 and 2000.

Ownership and finances

The radio station is owned by the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer (Warsaw Province), and is financed through donations from its audience ("The Radio Maryja Family"). Radio Maryja is, thanks to a concordat with the Vatican that grants certain privileges to the Church, not bound by any accountancy rules. Therefore Radio Maryja does not have to disclose the sources of its financing (nor does it have to for any of its other media outlets). Radio Maryja is one of several Catholic media outlets in Poland.

Audience

Radio Maryja attracts a large audience, whose size isn't exactly clear. The station frequently claims that it has "millions of listeners", but market research usually shows lower numbers: approx. 1.2 million people daily. The audience peaked in 1998 and was estimated to be around 2 million listeners. The station claims that it is listened to by well over 10% of adults in Poland[1], but the most comprehensive market research by Radio Track [2] for the whole of Poland (June-July 2005) shows a 2.5% "share of listening time". [3]

Strong supporters of the Radio identify themselves with the "Radio Maryja Family", which opponents call "Mohair berets", a pejorative expression, those opponents are called in turn, slightly pejoratively, homoliberals.

Controversies

The Vatican has voiced concern about Radio Maryja [4] [5], and the station has been criticized by Polish and international media. A recent survey on European "hate radio" prepared by Radio Netherlands indicated Radio Maryja is controversial. According to this survey, one of Radio Maryja's programs, "Unfinished Conversations", is, according to the magazine Polityka, "dominated by intolerance and authoritarianism". Lech Wałęsa, a former president of Poland who is also a human rights activist, announced that "Radio [Maryja] is lying if it considers itself a Catholic station". [6]

• Antisemitism. Critics [7] say that the radio station crosses the line of xenophobia and antisemitism against żydokomuna. Segments of many such radio broadcasts are ridiculed on satirical websites such as Emigranci. In one broadcast Radio Maryja listeners were informed that the Jewish people fled from Poland with all the Jewish gold (listen) and that Jews have a negative effect on the birth rate of the Polish people (listen). Commentators have spoken out against efforts to gain reparations for losses sustained by Jews during the Holocaust, sometime using pejorative terms.

• Conspiracy Theories. A recent affair with WSI, presented in this radio station by Antoni Macierewicz, shows how society was steered by the secret services. The station has claimed that the freemasons trying to rule the world and that the Jews hopping to conquer the world (listen). It was once broadcast that the Jews rule the country and their government should be removed with violence and that Radio Maryja should take the power (listen). Jewish people working in the World Trade Center were accused of betrayal and conspiracy as they supposedly knew everything ahead of time.

• History Falsification. In January 2000 Ryszard Bender, a historian from the Catholic University of Lublin announced on Radio Maryja that the German Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz was at the beginning not a place of mass extermination, but a place of hard work[8].

• Direct involvement in political issues, which is not against the Polish Catholic Church's directives for priests. In February 2006 the Law and Justice party signed a key agreement with two other political parties. To the fury of the so called "Polish press", only journalists from Radio Maryja's sister television network Trwam and its director, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, were allowed in the room. Conservative politicians from major political parties are often invited to speak on Radio Maryja.

Despite these "criticisms", Radio Maryja claims that it is the only truthful radio station in Poland. It accuses other media, mainly Gazeta Wyborcza, of conspiring to attack the "only entirely Polish radio station" that preaches the gospel and teaches prayer.

Related enterprises

Enterprises related to Radio Maryja and initiated by Father Rydzyk are Telewizja Trwam ("I persist" TV network) [9], Nasz Dziennik ("Our Daily"), the Nasza Przyszłość ("Our Future") Foundation, the Lux Veritatis Foundation, and the Wyższa Szkoła Kultury Społecznej i Medialnej ("The College of Social and Media Culture") in Toruń. The rector of the School is Father Rydzyk .

Radio Maryja's opponents say that these enterprises are dominated by Father Rydzyk and call them the "Media Empire of Father Rydzyk", or the "Rydzyk holding company" ([10], article in Polish).

Trivia

• The station used to continuously broadcast a RDS signal for traffic announcements making car radios in Poland automatically switch to Radio Maryja (see Usenet post: [11], in Polish).

• In 1996 an anonymous person phoned Radio Maryja and used vulgar language with the priest hosting a live program (article in Polish). As a result Radio Maryja uses a delay loop which allows them to filter callers' comments.

• Radio Maryja currently broadcasts on FM frequencies in Poland, via satellite and the Internet. Until 2003 it was also aired on shortwave from Russia.

External links

• "Radio Maryja - The Catholic Voice in Your Home" official web site
• Radio Netherlands feature on controversial European radio stations including Radio Maryja
• Tel Aviv University Report from the Stephen Roth institute for the study of contemporary Racism and Antisemitism
• Radio nasty: Anti-Semitic radio in trouble, The Economist, 12 April 2006
• Google News: Radio Maryja (results compiled solely by computer algorithms, without human intervention)
• Radio Maryja - list of quotations (in Polish)
• Richard Bernstein, Differing Treatment of Religious Slurs Raises an Old Issue, The New York Times, May 3, 2006.

See also

• Mary, mother of Jesus
• Nationalism
• Mohair berets
• Kaczyzm
• Media in Poland
• Separation of church and state
• Evangelization