WARSAW — In a surprisingly frank attack, former Polish president and Nobel peace laureate Lech Walesa said it was a “big mistake” to award the 2003 prize to an Iranian human rights activist and snub his compatriot Pope John Paul II.

“For me it is a big mistake, a bad mistake, an unfortunate mistake,” a visibly annoyed Walesa told Polish television, after watching the Oct. 10 announcement of the award to Iranian human rights activist and feminist lawyer Shirin Ebadi from his home in Gdansk, northern Poland.

“I have nothing against this woman, but if there is someone alive in the world who deserves this distinction it is certainly the Holy Father,” he said.

Similarly strong criticism of the choice came from Bishop Tadeusz Pieronek, a senior figure in the Polish Roman Catholic Church in Krakow, the southern Polish town where the Pope was cardinal-archbishop before his election to the papacy in 1978.

“The Pope did not expect any prize and will not be surprised, but I am surprised and I think that public opinion is too that his immense effort for peace has not been recognized,” he was quoted as saying by the PAP news agency.

The ailing 83-year-old Pope, a Pole much beloved by his compatriots, had been considered one of the favorites for the prestigious prize, alongside former Czech president Vaclav Havel.

The surprise announcement that it had gone to Ebadi comes amid deep concerns for the Pope's health and as Poland, an overwhelmingly Catholic country, prepares on Sunday to launch celebrations of the 25th anniversary of a man they consider a political and religious hero.

President Aleksander Kwasni-ewski, who ousted Walesa in 1995, played down the disappointment, offering his congratulations to Ebadi while admitting in comments carried on the PAP news agency: “Poles expected something slightly different.”

“For us the Pope's merits are immeasurable, a prize would not be enough, there is therefore no reason to speak of deep disappointment,” he said, saying he respected the sovereignty of the Nobel Committee.

Walesa, who won the prize in 1983 and was elected as Poland's first post-communist president in 1990, has remained on the sidelines of political life, but nevertheless a highly vocal media personality, since losing the presidency.

A fervent Roman Catholic himself, he received, as former leader of the Solidarity trade union, much moral support from the Pope during the fight which eventually led to the fall of communism and the Iron Curtain in 1989.

“Before [John Paul II's] election just a few dozen of us wanted to fight communism,” Walesa told AFP in a recent interview. “But when he became Pope, when he arrived in Poland for the first time as John Paul II and [in 1979] uttered the famous words ‘do not be afraid,’ millions of us became committed to the fight.”

He said he would seek to investigate the reasons for the Nobel Committee's choice, but stressed he would not make a formal complaint to avoid offending the Pope.

In Rome a Vatican source said the same day the Pope would himself send a message of congratulations to Shirin Ebadi.

“I do not want to throw into question the committee's choice, but I am going to try and find out through my own contacts with the committee what weighed in favor of such a decision,” Walesa said.

“The Pope has so many merits, he has tried to convince the big powers that peace is always a better solution than war. The one who has done the most in the world, for all religions, did not get the prize,” he said.

But he said to protest against the choice “would be an offence to the Pope. The Holy Father is bigger than the Nobel Peace Prize,” he added, “than all the prizes in the world.”

(Agence-France Presse)