Poland:Controversial Polish priest Fr Tadeusz Rydzyk has announced that his Radio Maryja station will back prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski in next month's general election.
The announcement, made on the station after morning prayers, ends weeks of speculation and could prove a welcome boost for Mr Kaczynski's national conservative Law and Justice Party (PiS).
A month before the snap poll, PiS is currently neck-and-neck with the liberal opposition Civic Platform (PO) for the lead. Now Mr Kaczynski can hope that, as in the 2005 election, Radio Maryja listeners will follow the on-air advice of Fr Rydzyk and vote for PiS.
Fr Rydzyk's announcement flouts demands by leading Catholic church figures, including the former private secretary of Pope John Paul II, for the station to stay out of politics.
The decision to back PiS came as a surprise to some members of Fr Rydzyk's inner circle. They had said that Fr Rydzyk would withhold his support for Mr Kaczynski because of disappointment with the stance of his government on social issues, in particular its refusal to push for a total ban on abortion.
But everything appears to have changed in the days after Polish ministers vetoed EU plans for a day against the death penalty unless abortion and euthanasia were also discussed.
Radio Maryja's estimated one million listeners are mostly over-50 and drawn from rural regions of eastern Poland. They are coveted by politicians because they always vote en bloc.
Fr Rydzyk launched Radio Maryja in 1991 as "the Catholic voice in your home".
Funded initially by contributions from elderly listeners, the station has grown into a media empire which includes a television station, a daily newspaper and a post-graduate college .
Radio Maryja's programme format revolves around prayer and religious programmes. But the most popular and controversial programme is the evening discussion programme Unfinished Talks, which regularly airs anti-Semitic and homophobic views as well as attacks on the EU, liberalism and the threat to Poland from foreigners.
Fr Rydzyk rejects the criticism that his station broadcasts hate speech. In a rare recent interview, he said the real problem was the liberal bias in the Polish media which he said, just as in communist times, promoted uniformity of opinion to control the masses.
"The media form people's opinions and thinking . . . for money. In turn, those who have money can have media and power," he said to the Niedziela religious weekly. "But all of a sudden, a radio station has appeared and it courageously opposes the opinions, and hence it is a threat to them."
Several attempts to take Fr Rydzyk to court over Radio Maryja's broadcasts have failed.
"We went to the state prosecutor's office twice and both times our complaints were rejected as not serious enough for investigation," said Ms Paula Sawicka of Poland's Open Republic organisation, which campaigns against anti-Semitism.
The Vatican has issued stern warnings to the station but Polish episcopate has been unable and unwilling to act against the station because enough influential bishops welcome its religious programming.