Agnieszka Radwanska Fires Back At Her Catholic Critics

Tennis star Agnieszka Radwanska took some hard criticism this week in her home country after posing nude for ESPN’s Body Issue. After several days of silence, Radwanska responded as most athletes do when their names are tied to controversy: She unleashed a serious rant on social media.

Radwanska is a practicing Roman Catholic, and has even participated in the Polish Catholic campaign “I’m not ashamed of Jesus!” releasing a video encouraging young Catholics to not be ashamed of their faith.

But after posing nude for ESPN Magazine’s Body Issue, Radwanska was dropped from the campaign amid Catholic outcry in her home country of Poland.

Though Jesus would not have turned his back on the 24-year-old, it seems that Polish Catholics (at least, the Youth Crusade she was a part of) have.

In response, Radwanska offered the following rebuttal on her Facebook page:

“The pictures are certainly not meant to cause offense and to brand them as immoral clearly does not take into account the context of the magazine,” she wrote.

“Moreover, they do not contain any explicit imagery whatsoever. I train extremely hard to keep my body in shape and that’s what the article and the magazine is all about. If you read the interview, it only discusses my job as an athlete and what I have to do physically to be able to participate at the highest level of sport.”

ESPN’s Body Issue has been controversial in recent years for including images of nude athletes. Though the masses understand that these images are only meant to portray the human body in its peak physical condition, some have criticized the edition as pornographic and lewd.

Lolo Jones, another devout Christian athlete, has also posed for the magazine.

What do you think of Agnieszka Radwanska’s response to her nude photo critics?

[Top image: Christopher Johnson, bottom: ESPN]