A priest in Poland has confessed to killing a homeless man. According to the public prosecutor’s office (Friday), the Catholic priest from the village of Przypki near Warsaw stated in his interrogation that he had got into an argument with the 68-year-old victim. He then hit him on the head with an axe on Thursday evening, doused him with flammable liquid and set him on fire.

In response, Archbishop Adrian Galbas of Warsaw called on all priests in his archdiocese to hold penitential services this Sunday to pray for the murdered man. “The blood of our murdered brother cries out to God,” said Galbas (Friday evening). He had no words of comfort at the moment and no answer to any question that began with the word “why”, the archbishop said. “I am crushed and shaken by the news that one of my priests brutally murdered a poor and homeless person.”

Was a self-inflicted offence the background to the crime?

Galbas announced ecclesiastical proceedings against the perpetrator. The archdiocese will co-operate fully with the criminal prosecution authorities in order to clarify all the circumstances of the crime. The background to this is said to have been a contract in which the priest undertook to look after the 68-year-old for the rest of his life and to organise accommodation for the man in return for a donation. “The conflict centred on the question of where the homeless man should live,” said a spokeswoman for the Radom Public Prosecutor’s Office , according to the news channel TVN24.

According to the prosecution, a cyclist had discovered the man’s burning body in a field. He had given the police the licence plate number of a car that drove away from the scene of the crime. It belonged to the priest. The police arrested him at the rectory.