President denies breaking rules on public gatherings by praying against coronavirus at shrine

Polish president Andrzej Duda last night prayed for relief from the coronavirus epidemic at Jasna Góra Monastery in Częstochowa, Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine.

But his actions were criticised by some for apparently contravening new government restrictions limiting religious services to five participants (excluding officials administering them) in order to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Meanwhile, a deputy leader of the conservative ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, Antoni Macierewicz, has criticised the limits on church attendance, calling them “absurd”. He advised the health minister to loosen the restrictions, because “practising faith is essential in these difficult times”.

The Jasna Góra Monastery shared photographs of the president’s visit on its social media, writing that Duda had prayed for Poland and his compatriots around the world in the face of the “rampant coronavirus pandemic”. The shrine is home to the famous Black Madonna (or Our Lady) of Częstochowa, which is visited by millions of pilgrims from Poland and abroad every year.

There were at least ten people in the chapel at the time, only one of whom, Częstochowa metropolitan bishop Wacław Depo, was leading the prayer, reports RMF. The president was setting a “bad example”, according to reporter Arkadiusz Grochot, by participating in such a congregation.

According to the restrictions announced earlier this week, religious ceremonies are limited to no more than five attendees until at least 11 April. This is an exception to the general two-person limit on gatherings currently in force. Those who break the rules can be fined up to 5,000 zloty.

Even if the law was not broken, questions were raised over whether it was essential for State Security Service (SOP) personnel, as well as several non-presiding clerics, to be in attendance, according to Wirtualna Polska.

“The State Security Service always makes its own decisions on its work. We never interfere in these decisions,” the president’s spokesman Błażej Spychalski told the website. “We satisfied all the procedures and recommendations of the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate.”

Others commended Duda’s visit to Jasna Góra. Jacek Karnowski, editor of conservative weekly Sieci, described it as an “important and beautiful gesture” for the president to “ask Her for help in the name of us all – those who cannot now go there ourselves”.

Meanwhile, veteran PiS politician Antoni Macierewicz has described the restrictions on church attendance as “unwise” in his video column for the Catholic television channel Trwam, and appealed to the health minister to rethink this part of the decree.

Macierewicz, who served as defence minister between 2015 and 2018 and is currently the senior marshal of the Sejm, Poland’s lower house of parliament, argued that it did not make sense to limit attendance to five people at large places of worship, such as St Mary’s Basilica in Kraków or the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw, when “hundreds of people” could still gather in supermarkets.

Quoted on website wPolityce.pl, he said:

It is absurd, because most churches can accommodate 100 people with spaces of several metres between them, and the consequences for our spiritual lives, our psychological state, our spirituality, are obviously extremely negative…Faith and practising it is essential in these difficult times. Of course…while abiding by epidemiological obligations, but not closing churches, not throwing us out of the church.

The Catholic church attracted some criticism early on in the coronavirus outbreak for downplaying its seriousness of the epidemic as well as for its refusal to cancel masses, instead opting to increase the number of services in order to reduce average attendance at each.

Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki, the president of the Polish Episcopal Conference, said that “churches are something like hospitals for the soul”. His words later echoed by deputy prime minister Jarosław Gowin, who voiced support for the church’s position. After the government tightened restrictions on 13 March, banning gatherings exceeding 50 people, some Catholic orders closed churches and cancelled masses.

Dispensations were subsequently issued to excuse the faithful from attending Sunday Mass and instead participate in services through television or the internet . But one archbishop told parishioners to continue practising their faith as usual, reassuring that “Christ does not spread germs” and “Satan is powerless in the face of holy water”.

For all of our coverage of the coronavirus epidemic in Poland, see our constantly updated archive of stories here.

Main image credit: Twitter/JasnaGoraNews

Ben Koschalka

Ben Koschalka is a translator and senior editor at Notes from Poland. Originally from Britain, he has lived in Kraków since 2005.