A Polish court has ruled that a six-year-old boy is the only heir of a prominent priest who died without making a will.
Roman Catholic priest Monsignor Waldemar Irek, rector of the Papal Faculty of Theology in the southwestern city of Wroclaw, died in 2012 of a heart attack. It was then discovered that he had had an eight-year affair with Wieslawa Dargiewicz, and that the two had a son together, named Kuba.
Irek's fortune included £600,000 of rare religious items including paintings and books. However, when he died his family told Dargiewicz that she and the boy would receive nothing.
She fought the case through the courts and proved Kuba's paternity with a DNA test, which involved exhuming Irek's body.
According to the Associated Press, the court in Wroclaw ruled that Kuba was Irek's closest family and for that reason his sole heir.
"It was a road through hell, through humiliation and pain but I feel satisfied and happy now," Dargiewicz said on TVN24. "My son will have at least a part of what his father has promised him."
The judgment is subject to appeal and Irek's mother and niece have three weeks to decide whether to challenge the decision. Church authorities have renounced any claim to the property.
Irek is believed to have had affairs with other women, leading a diocesan spokesman to express regret over his "double life".
