At more than 100ft tall, it will tower imperiously over the Polish town of Swiebodzin. But a giant statue of Jesus currently under construction has divided Polish Catholics and led to charges of megalomania against the Catholic church.

The 36 metre (118ft)-high structure is being built on a 16 metre-high hill in the western Polish town. Locals claim it will be taller, just, than the 80-year-old Christ the Redeemer in Rio de Janeiro, currently the world's highest statue of Jesus.

The main body of Swiebodzin's Jesus is 33 metres high – a metre for each year he lived – and is topped with a 3 metre-high metal crown of thorns.

The project has split Polish society with some expressing pride, others derision, and with many practising Catholics calling for it to be abandoned. The chief building inspector has received threats, including having a brick thrown through his car window.

Supporters of the project, which is being led by local priest Sylwester Zawadzki, hope the statue will attract pilgrims from across the country, turning the economically downtrodden town into a "second Czestochowa", a reference to Poland's most popular pilgrimage site and home of the legendary Black Madonna shrine.

The 400-tonne statue has been five years in the making. Originally, Zawadzki wanted a "small garden sculpture", but over time his ambitions have grown.

The latest worries concern the sculpture's safety, after a crane collapsed when builders tried to place the head. As it fell, the head crushed a builder's foot, leading sceptics to call the accident a sign of God's disapproval. When Zawadzki suffered a heart attack the same claim was made.

Building experts have voiced concerns that the statue's foundations – construction on which began even before planning approval was granted – are not deep enough. "We'll give it 20 years, maximum, then it'll fall apart," a building expert told Polish media.

Zawadzki stands accused of paying workers derisory wages, expecting them to carry out the work for next to nothing as a sign of their faith, and even of bringing in inmates from the local prison to work on the project, under an agreement he allegedly hatched with the prison governor.

Waldemar Roszczuk, editor of the local newspaper Gazeta Swiebodzinska, has been leading a campaign against the structure, which has been compared to the type of communist-era icons that once commanded squares and public places.

"It's a monster of a statue which has nothing to do with Christian teaching," he said. "It's making us a laughing stock in the whole country."