A Catholic church has created a ‘price list’ for their new car park which sees occupants having to say a certain number of prayers for the time they are parked there rather than paying cash.
The bizarre ‘pricing’ scheme was created by priest Ryszard Szmist at the Church of Our Lady of Perpetual Help parish in the city of Lodz in Lodz Voivodeship, central Poland.
The ‘price list’, which has been posted in the car park, sees drivers ‘charged’ with different numbers of decades of the Rosary they must say depending on how long they keep their car in their space.
The list starts with one decade of the Rosary for stays of under 15 minutes and goes up to drivers being asked to say two Mysteries of the Rosary for stays of between three hours and a day.
Priest Szmist told local media he had worked with parishioners to clear the space for the car park as it had been overrun with bushes and branches from nearby trees, adding: “People at mass were not able to park their cars, so we had to make it work. Procedures, permits, design and then the construction of the car park took a little time because of the mild winter of three months.”
The priest said that one of the devotees helping him with the car park asked him how the fees would be, and he says he replied: “I said that the solution would be found. I thought that there was never too much prayer. And this is how the ‘price list’ came into being.”
He says he does not worry about people parking and not ‘paying’ with prayer, saying the person will then pay for it “with their own conscience”.
Churchgoers attending Sunday mass are reportedly exempt from the ‘fee’.
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Story By: Bartosz Staszewski, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
