Warsaw (AFP) - Catholic priests in Poland burned books they say are sacrilegious this weekend, including tomes from British author J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series of fantasy novels. Father Jan Kucharski, the priest in the Gdansk parish where the book burning took place, told the natemat.pl news website on Monday that they had burned items "linked to the occult and magic."
This latest incident comes as Poland's influential Roman Catholic church struggles to deal with the fallout of revelations about paedophilia among priests that are unprecedented in this overwhelmingly Catholic country. Last month, the Polish episcopate admitted for the first time that nearly 400 of its clergy had sexually abused children and minors over the past three decades.
Rather than burning fantasy novels, maybe they should burn some priests.