Zbigniew Religa

Zbigniew Religa ( born December 16, 1938 in Miedniewice, Poland, † March 8, 2009 in Warsaw, Poland) was a Polish heart surgeon and politician. From October 2005 to November 2007 he was health minister in the governments under the Prime Minister Marcinkiewicz and Kaczyński.

Life

Religa studied until 1963 at the Medical Academy in Warsaw. From 1968 to 1980 he was a doctor in the Wola Hospital and then at the clinic of the Cardiology Institute in Warsaw. From 1984 he headed the Cardiological Clinic in Zabrze. In 1990 he became a professor at the Silesian Medical Academy in Katowice (Polish Akademia Śląska Medyczna Katowicach w ), from 1997 to 1999, its rector. 2001 Head of the II cardiac clinic and Director of the Cardiology Institute in Warsaw. Zbigniew Religa was also head of the team that became the first in Poland carried out a successful heart transplant.

Religa of life represented conservative values ​​and the Christian- national parties was close, pleaded only a few months before his death to atheism. After his death, however, a funeral mass was held for Religa in Zabrze, according to his desire participated alongside doctors and politicians and the population at the. On 13 March 2009 he was then buried in the Warsaw Powązki cemetery.

Zbigniew Religa was married to the doctor Anna Wajszczuk - Religa and had two children: daughter Małgorzata ( sinologist at Warsaw University ) and Grzegorz son, who also works as Kardiochirurg.

Policy

From 1993 to 1997 and from 2001 to 2005, Religa Senator in the Senate of the Republic of Poland, among other things, for the Electoral Action Solidarity.

In April 2004 he founded, together with the Senator Krzysztof Piesiewicz the Centre Party (Polish: Centrum partia ).

In spring 2005 Religa was traded due to his great popularity among the people as one of the most promising candidates for the presidential elections in autumn 2005. However, in the summer of 2005, the now non-party candidate had little chance for an election victory. Politicians like Włodzimierz Cimoszewicz and Donald Tusk had expired him the rank, so he withdrew his candidacy in favor of the latter, on 2 September 2005.

After the 2005 parliamentary elections, he was appointed as Minister of Health in the government of Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz. This office he retained too - apart from a few days during a government crisis in September 2007 - in the government of Jarosław Kaczyński.

In the parliamentary elections in Poland in 2007, he moved to the PiS as an MP for the constituency of Gliwice in parliament. Zbigniew Religa presided on 5 November 2007, the opening session of the Sejm as interim president (Polish Marszalek Senior).

At the request of the children, he received the International Award as a Cavalier of the Order of the Smile.