A parish priest has been sentenced to 30 hours community service for disturbing parishioners with his church bells. The parish priest ignored requests from locals and the police to cease the cacophony. Locals living near the church in the Polish town of Lewin said they has been plagued by the bells since 2009 when Father Andrzej Wrobel installed an automatic system that rang the balls every hour and half-hour through the night, and could also play hymns as dawn broke. “The noise was so loud you couldn’t sleep,” one Lewin resident said, while another said the bells frightened children and made dogs howl. A resident said a three month jail sentence would have been fitting considering the three years of torment he had endured owing to the bells. Describing Father Wrobel as “malicious” he added that he feared the priest, intent on revenge, might start the bells again with additional vigour.
