Woman convicted of offending religious feelings by throwing eggs at church in Polish abortion protest

In a ruling that is now legally binding, a woman who threw eggs at a church during protests against Poland’s near-total abortion ban has been found guilty of offending religious feelings, which is a crime in Poland punishable by a prison sentence of up to two years.

The woman, Zofia Nierodzińska, had appealed after last year being found guilty of the offence and ordered to pay 2,000 zloty. That verdict has now been upheld by an appeals court, but the judge decided to lift the fine.

Nierodzińska, the deputy director of the Arsenal Municipal Gallery in Poznań, posted a video of herself throwing the eggs at the closed door of a church in the city in October 2020 amid mass protests against the constitutional court ruling that had just outlawed almost all abortion in Poland.

“Perhaps that wasn’t the most sensible thing to do, but we’re at war, right?” she wrote under the post.

Subsequently, she was interviewed by not only the police but also the military police, as the building she targeted in the Jeżyce district of Poznań turned out to be the church of a nearby garrison, reports TVN24.

Nierodzińska was charged with offending religious sentiments by publicly insulting an object of religious worship or place designated for public performance of religious rites. The indictment included testimonies from several priests and lay people that their sensibilities had been offended.

In September last year, a district court ruled that Nierodzińska had indeed offended religious feelings, but at the same time conditionally discontinued the proceedings for one year’s probation, ordering that she pay 2,000 zloty to a fund for victims and witnesses of crime.

The judge, Katarzyna Kosmalewicz, noted that for a person’s religious feelings to be offended they need not have been a witness to the incident. “Decisive is the fact that the offending content reached a specific person, resulting in a strong reaction with the character of offence of religious feelings,” she ruled.

“I am innocent,” Nierodzińska said at the time, calling her act a gesture of civil disobedience. “I’m sorry that a woman, the judge, does not take the word of a female citizen, but does take that of privileged priests and believes that they have been traumatised by three eggs.”

In her appeal, Nierodzińska’s lawyer, Mateusz Szynwelski, pointed out that his client had made sure that no one was around and the church was empty before throwing the eggs, and that the plaintiffs must have searched for the film online before taking offence.

However, the appeals court judge, Aleksander Brzozowski, was not convinced, upholding the guilty verdict and conditional probation, although he waived the obligation to pay the contribution to the fund.

“The accused has lived in Poland for many years, she was born here, and for every Pole, such an exemplary follower of the Catholic religion in Poland, it is obvious that throwing eggs at a church, or a secular person, or an institution is an expression of contempt, insult, humiliation,” he said.

Nierodzińska yesterday reiterated her claims that she is innocent, adding that she has decided to leave Poland because she is scared of Polish doctors and hospitals.

“It’s not about the feelings of the church hierarchy, but about fighting for the right to freedom and women’s lives in this country. That is what I am fighting for,” she said.

The mass protests that broke out following the near-total abortion ban in some cases targeted churches and other Catholic sites. That led to some clashes with nationalists who had rallied to defend churches.

Last year, one of the leaders of the protests was charged with a number of offences, including of damaging a monument by spraying graffiti on a historical church. Soon after, the trial began of 32 people accused of “malicious interference with a public performance of a religious act” by protesting in a church.

In recent years Poland has seen a growing number of prosecutions under its blasphemy laws, with critics accusing the conservative government of seeking to suppress free speech.

Last year, three LGBT activists were found not guilty of offending religious feelings for adding rainbow colours to an image of the Virgin Mary and Jesus. A few weeks earlier, however, musician Nergal was convicted of the same crime for posting an image of a foot stamping on the Virgin Mary.

Main image credit: Jakub Orzechowski / Agencja Gazeta

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.