Police take action after thousands of bikers gather at Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine

Around 10,000 bikers gathered at the Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa yesterday to take part in an annual mass to mark the opening of the motorcycling season.

Local police said that they would be reporting the organiser to the sanitary authorities and the prosecutor’s office for potential violations of coronavirus restrictions. Officers intervened in a number of cases where rules were ignored, but the large numbers of attendees made their task harder.

Regarded as Poland’s holiest shrine, Jasna Góra, home to the image of the Black Madonna of Częstochowa, is a popular pilgrimage site among Catholics, visited by 4.4 million people in 2019.

The annual bikers’ gathering was taking place for the 18th time, organised by the International Motorcycle Katyń Rally Association. Originally planned to last two days, it was confined to a mass on Sunday as a result of hotels being closed due to current COVID-19 restrictions, reports Polsat News.

Attendees parked their motorbikes in rows on the field marked out by organisers outside the monastery for an open-air mass “in the intention of all motorcyclists”.

Michał Legan, Jasna Góra’s press spokesman, said that the shrine as well as the organisers had taken safety measures, with numbers for this year’s event restricted as the gathering would usually attract “hundreds of thousands” of people.

“We at Jasna Góra made sure that all sanitary restrictions were kept to. The pilgrims are quite disciplined, we see that they are wearing masks and maintaining social distancing during the holy mass” as well as “using hand disinfection points”, he said, quoted by TVN24.

“Individually people are rather abiding by the rules. Everyone is aware that the situation is difficult, you have to take care of yourself and others,” one biker told TVN24. “There are concerns, but tradition and faith work miracles,” added another.

Video from the event shows that, despite the organisers’ efforts, many participants were not wearing masks and were standing close together during the mass, and there has been criticism of the wisdom of allowing such a large event to go ahead as Poland struggles to reduce coronavirus infection rates.

In a statement, Częstochowa police said that there had been some violations of the rules concerning prevention of the spread of coronavirus, and that evidence collected at the event would be passed on to the prosecutor’s office and sanitary department to assess whether the organiser had broken any laws.

Sabina Chyra-Giereś, a police spokeswoman, said that they intervened where possible, identifying and fining attendees who were not observing sanitary requirements, but the numbers of bikers made this a difficult task. During the rally, police identified almost 100 offences.

“We reacted on an ongoing basis. There were 10,000 participants, there were so many groups, and unfortunately not enough police officers to go up to each person,” she said, quoted by RMF24.

According to the current restrictions in Poland, public gatherings are limited to five people, with a minimum of 100 metres between gatherings. An exception is made for religious gatherings, as long as participants maintain a distance of 1.5 metres and wear a face covering.

Last year, Poland’s president, Andrzej Duda, denied claims that he had violated restrictions after he was pictured praying at Jasna Góra for relief from the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, religious services were limited to five participants, but the chapel appeared to contain more than that.

This year, sanitary authorities confirmed that restrictions had been violated at a mass in memory of the mother of Jarosław Kaczyński, chairman of Poland’s conservative ruling party. However, no action was taken over the breach.

Main image credit: JasnaGoraNews/Twitter

Ben Koschalka

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