Etching of Quasimodo from Victor Hugo's "Hunchback of Notre Dame"

Priest given community service for ringing church bells

A parish priest has been sentenced to 30 hours community service for disturbing parishioners with his church bells.

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 told Polish radio, while another said the bells frightened children and made dogs howl.

The court handed down the sentence after Father Wrobel ignored requests from locals and the police to cease the cacophony, and also dismissed his claim that most people in the town favoured the regular tolling.