Poland's new liberal government has decided to deny 15 million euros in EU funding the renegade Catholic Radio Maryja station had slated for the construction of a media school, a minister said Friday."Father Rydzyk's school does not fulfil the required criteria," Poland Regional Development Minister Elzbieta Bienkowska said.
Tadeusz Rydzyk, the controversial Redemptorist priest and founder of a media empire including Radio Maryja, TV Trwam and the Nasz Dziennik daily, had intended to use the EU funding to develop facilities for his media school.
Radio Maryja said Friday it had already invested significant sums in the project.
The scheme had been approved among 433 others by Poland's previous conservative-nationalist government which lost power in an October snap election.
The new government headed by Prime Minister Donald Tusk's liberal Civic Platform (PO) launched a review of the projects approved by the previous administration.
Based in Torun, northern Poland, Radio Maryja regularly broadcasts programmes tinged by anti-Semitic and nationalist statements whose outspokenness have upset the Vatican.
An outspoken critic of the European Union, Rydzyk wanted nonetheless to use its funding to build a new facility to house his school which trains staff for his media empire. His plans totalling 18 million euros included an ultra-modern IT facility.
Rydzyk had termed the project an "incubator of modern technologies for the benefit of civil society."
Prior to Poland's 2004 EU entry, Radio Maryja campaigned against accession, accusing the bloc of propagating "moral relativism" with regard to euthanasia, abortion and homosexuality.
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