The first woman pastor in the history of Polish Protestantism was recently ordained in the reformed evangelical parish of Zelòw (near Lodz). Wiera Smetana-Jelinek, aged 43, married with two children, graduated in theology and has for years acted as assistant to her husband, the pastor in charge of the congregation of Zelòw. The reformed evangelical Church in Poland was founded prior to the Protestant Reformation in Germany by some followers of Jan Hus, Peter of Cheltchiz and Luke of Prague. In the early years of the sixteenth century they established the first communities of the so-called Bohemian Brothers, later absorbed into the single Reformed Church. The ordination of Wiera Smetana-Jelinek is an unprecedented event in the annals of Polish Protestant ecumenism. The Evangelical Church of the Augsburg Confession (i.e. the Lutherans), the most numerous Protestant denominations in the country, only admits women to the diaconate. The other historical denominations (Methodists and Baptists) are still studying the question.
