Large numbers of people have been gathering in prayer around a tree next to an apartment block in the Polish city of Parczew after an image that some say resembles Jesus or the Virgin Mary mysteriously appeared on its bark.
The local Catholic curia has, however, rejected the idea that the image has divine origin, with a spokesman joking it looks more like Conchita Wurst – the drag queen who won the Eurovision Song Contest in 2014 – than Jesus or Mary.
On Tuesday this week, a video first appeared on YouTube showing people gathered around the tree in Parczew, a town of 10,000 in eastern Poland. Many could be heard praying.
As the news started to draw national attention, larger numbers of people began arriving each day at the site to pray or simply see the image for themselves. Many have told reporters that they regard it as some kind of divine message.
Some believe the image – which is several metres above ground level – resembles Mary and have likened it to the Marian apparitions reported to have appeared in Fátima, Portugal and Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina.
But others claim it is the son of God himself. “I see the Lord Jesus, his face and crown,” one visitor, Jadwiga, told the Fakt tabloid. “This is really some kind of miracle or warning. I will come here every day. I am praying here.”
But others are more sceptical. “It’s just some kind of tree disease,” said another visitor, Lucjan. “The marks on the bark just happened to line up like that.”
In response to the growing interest, the Roman Catholic diocese of Siedlce issued a statement saying that “we are not dealing with a supernatural phenomenon [and] therefore the diocese will not start canonical proceedings”.
“If we trace the history of apparitions, we do not see any on the bark of a tree,” the curia’s spokesman, Father Jacek Świątek, told local newspaper Dziennik Wschodni. “There will be no reaction on our part, because the church deals with serious issues, not cheap sensations.”
Speaking to another local newspaper, Wspólnota Parczewska, Świątek joked that the image on the tree looks more like Conchita Wurst than Mary or Jesus. Yet, while he suggested that “the apparition will disappear with the next rain”, it remains on the tree despite downpours this week.
Conchita Wurst (Albin Olsson/Wikimedia Commons, under CC BY-SA 3.0)
Poland is one of Europe’s most religious countries, with over 90% of the population officially classified as Catholic, 87% declaring themselves to be believers in God, and 43% saying that they practice their faith regularly.
Main image credit: TV Dębowa Kłoda/YouTube screenshot
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.
