The wall of tension and stony silence between Poland's head of state and the top catholic cleric in Europe's most devout country was palpable as the two stood next to each other in the autumn sunshine at ceremonies opening the country's newest bridge on the mighty Vistula River in Warsaw this week. In the final heat before Poland's third democratic presidential ballot on Sunday, a deep rift between ex-Communist incumbent President Aleksander Kwasniewski, a self-declared agnostic, and the country's Catholic Church, led by cardinal Josef Glemp, has been torn wide open leaving no room for small talk. Furious leaders of Poland's Catholic Church recently demanded that Kwasniewski quit office and abandon his bid for re-election after a TV campaigning clip aired by his rival solidarity candidate showed him allegedly goading an aide to parody polish-born Pope John Paul II. In the ad Kwasniewski appears to ask his national security advisor Marek Siwiec ''has the minister kissed the soil yet?'' after both emerged from a helicopter on a 1997 trip to Kalisz, central Poland. The aide then obliges, kneeling to kiss the ground in a gesture made famous by the pontiff on his numerous pilgrimages abroad. Since the ad first aired two weeks ago a storm of controversy has loomed large over the 45 year-old Kwasniewski's promising re-election campaign.
In Poland, where the Pope remains the most revered authority and is regarded as the ''father of the nation'', the gesture was received with shock and outrage by the Catholic faithful, with municipalities across the country joining the bishop's demand for Kwasniewski to go. Bureau Report