“It is our duty to thank God for gifting the Kaczyńskis to Poland,” says archbishop

Poles have a duty to thank God for the “gift” of ruling party chairman Jarosław Kaczyński and his late brother, former President Lech Kaczyński, the archbishop of Kraków has declared at a mass marking the 72nd anniversary of the twins’ birth.

The homily by Marek Jędraszewski, a prominent voice in Poland’s Catholic church who has aroused controversy for his anti-LGBT and anti-EU rhetoric, has drawn criticism from a number of commentators and opposition figures.

He was speaking in the cathedral at Wawel Castle in Kraków, the former seat of Polish kings and where Lech Kaczyński was entombed, alongside his wife Maria, following their death in the Smolensk air disaster in 2010 while serving as president.

The ceremony was attended by leading government figures, including the prime minister and five other ministers from his cabinet, as well as Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of Law and Justice (PiS), the main party in Poland’s national-conservative government.

“We, as the community of the church, living the teachings of Christ, have the right to give thanks for the life of President Lech Kaczyński and the Chairman [Jarosław Kaczyński], in terms of the Lord’s people who are pleased that for so many years such individuals have lived among them,” said Jędraszewski.

“It is our duty to thank God for them,” added the archbishop. “We have a duty to give thanks for the gift of their lives for Poland.”

After the ceremony, the prime minister and other politicians present joined Jarosław Kaczyński in praying at the tomb of the late presidential couple. They died along with 94 others, including many senior officials and other prominent public figures, when flying to Russia in April 2010.

PiS and the Catholic church in Poland have long been seen as allies, sharing a similar conservative agenda and using similar rhetoric on issues such as abortion and opposition to “LGBT ideology”.

Speaking in condemnation of recent mass protests against a near-total abortion ban supported by the Catholic hierarchy, Jarosław Kaczyński declared that the church is the “repository of the only moral system commonly known in Poland” and that “rejection of it is nihilism”.

Last year, speaking at Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine, Emeritus Bishop of Częstochowa Antoni Długosz thanked the government for doing God’s work. He likened the prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, and the health minister, Łukasz Szumowski, to their biblical namesakes, Saints Matthew and Luke.

Jędraszewski, who has long been a leading archconservative voice in the church, has repeatedly echoed PiS’s rhetoric on a number of political issues. Last year, he was appointed by the Catholic episcopate as the head of its commission overseeing relations with the government.

Amidst a government-led anti-LGBT campaign, the archbishop declared that “LGBT ideology” is a “rainbow plague” which threatens Poland in the same way Nazism and Bolshevism did in the past.

Last November, speaking at another mass in Wawel, he warned that Brussels, Berlin and New York are seeking to “impose a neo-Marxist vision of a new order” on Poland, including the “so-called rule of law” and “LGBT ideology”. PiS has regularly clashed with the EU over the rule of law.

His latest calls to thank God for the Kaczyńskis quickly drew criticism from opposition figures. “Bishop Jędraszewski is the author of a spectacular study on the collapse of an institution and of a man,” tweeted former prime minister Marek Belka.

A leading Catholic commentator, Tomasz Terlikowski, also upbraided the archbishop on social media, warning that such politicised sermons damage both Polish society and the church itself.

“I value the intelligence of Archbishop Marek Jędraszewski too much to assume that he preaches his sermons without being aware of the reactions they will trigger,” wrote Terlikowski. “Does he really not see that in a deeply divided Polish society, in which the church should be a unifying voice, such sermons divide?”

Main image credit: Jakub Porzycki / Agencja Gazeta

Daniel Tilles

Daniel Tilles is editor-in-chief of Notes from Poland. He has written on Polish affairs for a wide range of publications, including Foreign Policy, POLITICO Europe, EUobserver and Dziennik Gazeta Prawna.