A Polish archbishop who molested seminarians has been warned by the Vatican to stay away from public church celebrations, including World Youth Day. Media reports had stated Archbishop Juliusz Paetz, formerly of Poznan, saw no reason he could not participate in commemorations of the foundation of Christianity in Poland. The commemorations, from April 14-16, will Read more
Groups of Catholic women walked out of Masses in two Polish cities to protest at a proposed tightening of the nation’s abortion laws. They walked out of churches in Warsaw and Gdansk. At the Warsaw church of St Anna, the women shouted “scandal” as a priest read out a letter from Poland’s bishops in favour Read more
World Youth Day organizers in the United States and Poland remain in touch with diplomatic and security officials in their respective countries to ensure that pilgrims will remain safe during the festival of faith in late July. Security is expected to be extremely tight in Krakow, Poland, the WYD host city, as authorities in both Read more
Pope Francis will visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in July. He will visit the former Nazi death camp in southern Poland on July 29, on the third day of his visit to the country. Two of his predecessors have also visited the camp, John Paul II – himself Polish – in 1979 and retired pope Read more
Poland’s Catholic Church has called for a fitting tribute to hundreds of its priests who died in the Nazi concentration camp of Dachau. Commemorations of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Dachau, near Munich, in 1945 run from April 30 to May 3. A spokesman for the Polish bishops, Msgr Józef Kloch, said Dachau Read more
Poland’s Catholic bishops have suffered a defeat with the approval by the nation’s president of an international convention combating violence against women. The Council of Europe convention creates the world’s first legal framework for curbing psychological and sexual violence. It also criminalises forced marriages, stalking, and female genital mutilation. President Bronislaw Komorowski signed a government Read more
Eric Lepionka and Halina Melgies recently celebrate their 52nd wedding anniversary. They are two of the 733 Polish children who, 70 years ago, arrived in Wellington Harbour as New Zealand’s first official refugees. While the majority were orphans, 13-month-old Halina, now 71, arrived with her mother, one of the 102 caregivers who joined the children. Read more
The mayor of Warsaw has sacked the Catholic head of a maternity hospital who refused on conscience grounds to abort a foetus with severe deformities. Obstetrician Bogdan Chazan did not advise the mother of where she could get an abortion or that the legal gestational limit for the procedure was approaching. So mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz fired him Read more
The decision by Pope John Paul II’s personal secretary to publish a books of the late Pope’s personal notes is attracting controversy and moral indignation in Poland. Pope John Paul II’s last will and testament requested his notes be burnt. However his former secretary, now Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, is soon due to publish a book Read more
In Czaszek one of the oldest towns in southwestern Poland there is a strange chapel which has been constructed of human bones. Between 1776 and 1804, the local priest, Vaclav Tomasek, painstakingly gathered, cleaned and carefully arranged skeletons recovered from numerous, shallow mass graves left by the Thirty Years’ War, Silesian Wars and cholera outbreaks. Read more