A Polish man left his two-week-old daughter on the doorstep of a priest's house with a note asking for 'a huge favour'.
Tomasz Grzonka, 27, left the baby in a holdall in Reading last year, Reading Crown Court heard. The priest found the baby in the bag alongside a baby's bottle, two clean nappies, a dummy, a scarf, a towel, a silver chain and a note in Polish.
The note began 'Blessed be the Lord' and asked the priest for a 'huge favour', requesting he first take the fortnight-old baby to hospital for a check-up before seeing to it that the little girl was brought up by a Polish family.
The note added: "I need to act like this because I am unable to provide dignified conditions for her.
"I am enclosing a neck chain with this letter and ask you to get the future parents to pass it onto her.
"It has been blessed by the Pope."
Grzonka's barrister said it was 'not uncommon' in Poland for babies to be left anonymously with churches.
Farm labourer Grzonka, of no fixed abode, admitted cruelty to a person under the age of 16 and was given a 16-week jail term suspended for one year.
A woman, who cannot be named for legal reasons, also faced the same charge but was acquitted during an earlier hearing.
Father Edward Stachurski found the child on the steps of the London Road presbytery of the Polish Church of the Sacred Heart on 3 May, 2012.
Prosecuting, Daniel Fugallo said the priest had returned at 9pm on a 'chilly evening' and saw 'a black holdall zipped up almost completely and inside heard the sound of a baby softly crying'.
The baby had been left on the steps for about 30 minutes but was in good health.
Sentencing Grzonka, Judge Ian Grainger said it was an 'unusual and difficult case' and that the motive for the abandonment 'remained obscure'. He said despite Grzonka believing the priest was in, 'the reality is that anything could have happened to that child before she was found'.