As Poles move away from the church – particularly the urban young, and also some older believers in the Catholic small-town heartlands – a deeply religious country wrestles with its own identity. The Black Madonna of Częstochowa looks much like other Eastern religious icons, with its deep golden halos and sombre colour palette. But the Read more
Warsaw’s annual “Independence March” by far-right nationalist groups has long been used to espouse Polish pride, but Ukraine was on their minds at this year’s event. “Hitler is dead but Putin is alive and he is repeating history with the Ukrainians,” declared Stanislaw Fidurski, a 95-year-old retired colonel at Friday’s march, which was led by Read more
A Polish bishop is accusing the European Union (EU) of being ‘all talk’. With Poland in the middle of a huge refugee crisis, Bishop Krzysztof Zadarko is asking “where’s the support?” Millions of Ukrainian refugees have been pouring across Poland’s border since the 24 February Russian invasion. There’s been no support at all from the Read more
Almost 1,000 Polish Catholic convents have opened their doors to Ukraine’s refugees. The UN refugee agency says by March 14, almost 1.8 million people had entered Poland from Ukraine since the full-scale Russian invasion on February 24. The Council of Major Superiors of Congregations of Women Religious (the Major Superiors) in Poland says as at Read more
Well over a million refugees have crossed the border from Ukraine into Poland since the Russian invasion began three weeks ago. The Catholic Church in Poland is among those stepping up to welcome and care for for them and is encouraging all Poles to do the same. Poles as one are responding with open arms. The Read more
Russia is putting humanity in danger, the leader of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Archbishop Sviatoslav Shevchuk, said on Tuesday. “Today all of humanity has been placed in danger — that the powerful have a right to impose themselves on whomever they wish, with no regard for the rule of law,” he said. “It is Read more
In a first-ever appointment of its kind, a lay Catholic will represent the Church in Poland at the official opening of the synodal process next month. The two-year synodal process is a consultative phase involving Catholic dioceses around the world. Chosen by the Polish bishops’ conference president Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, Professor Aleksander Bańka is the Read more
A Polish court has acquitted three activists who put an LGBT rainbow on an icon of the Madonna and Child, made it into a poster and distributed it. The court said it did not see evidence of a crime. The activists had been charged with producing and distributing posters of an altered icon of the Read more
For 14 nights they have marched, enraged by a near-total ban on abortion that has stirred a generation to stage the largest mass demonstrations that Poland has seen since Solidarność toppled the communist regime in the 1980s. Until soaring coronavirus numbers and a looming national lockdown made it almost impossible, up to a million people Read more
A Polish archbishop’s attempts to cover up clergy sex abuse have resulted in Pope Francis replacing him on his 75th birthday. While all Catholic bishops must offer to retire when they turn 75, it is “highly unusual” for the pope to accept their resignation on their actual birthday. Doing so to Archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz Read more