“Poland is ruled by political gangsters,” says bishop in homily warning of migration threat

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Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and is published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

A bishop has given a homily at Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine during which he declared that the country “is ruled by political gangsters” and warned of the dangers of irregular migration.

In response, foreign minister Radosław Sikorski accused Wiesław Mering, bishop emeritus of Wlocławek, of “inciting against refugees”, which he said was “intellectually inconsistent” given that the church’s “founder was a refugee”.

Mering was speaking on Sunday at the annual pilgrimage organised by Radio Maryja, a Catholic broadcaster, to Jasna Góra monastery, which is home to the Black Madonna icon and is Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine.

“Our borders are threatened from both the west and the east,” he warned, referring to a migration crisis engineered by Belarus on Poland’s eastern border and the return of thousands of irregular migrants to Poland by Germany from the west.

On Saturday, at the same pilgrimage, Antoni Długosz, auxiliary bishop emeritus of Częstochowa, said that “German police are tossing illegal immigrants across the border like objects”. But “we Poles know what mercy is, and it doesn’t mean we should open our doors to all illegal immigrants”.

“It creates serious problems in the countries [illegal immigrants] arrive in,” continued Długosz. “For decades, the Islamisation of Europe has been progressing through mass immigration. What we are witnessing now in Poland is only the beginning. It began the same way in the West.”

Meanwhile, in his homily on Sunday, Mering said that Poland is “ruled by people who call themselves Germans”, referring to a recently leaked recording of a private phone call involving Prime Minister Donald Tusk in which he jokingly called himself German.

The bishop also declared that “a German will not be a brother to a Pole”, quoting the words of a 17th-century Polish poet. “History has horribly proven the truth of this saying,” said Mering.

“Poland is now ruled by political gangsters,” he added, claiming that Tusk himself had said this. The prime minister was, in fact, referring to the former Law and Justice (PiS) government when he spoke those words.

Mering also said that “schools are being destroyed by barbarism” because the government is “removing patriotic and national content”.

He defended the right of the church to involve itself in politics, saying that “a bishop’s duty is to bring Christ into politics, because politics without Christ is the greatest plague on the nation”. In 2020, Jasna Góra monastery issued rules banning political speeches.

The bishop’s homily prompted a response from Sikorski. With regard to being “German”, Sikorski noted that his “family connection to Germany” is the fact that his grandmother’s brother, Polish Catholic priest Roman Zientarski, was a prisoner of the German-Nazi concentration camp of Dachau.

Sikorski then added that he “considers inciting against refugees in the name of the church, whose founder was a refugee, intellectually inconsistent”.

Previously, on Saturday morning, Sikorski had published a video criticising recent cases of “anti-immigrant hysteria”, which he said “harms Poland” and “awakens the worst demons”

Meanwhile, at the same pilgrimage, Radio Maryja’s founder, Father Tadeusz Rydzyk, also criticised what he claimed is the removal of religion classes from schools by education minister Barbara Nowacka. “What are you thinking, you woman?” he asked.

“We Catholics, let us not allow [anyone] to spit on the church and God,” continued Rydzyk. “Let’s not allow our faith to be taken away…In order to destroy faith, the church, and then destroy your nation, Islamisation and genderisation are being forcibly introduced.”

In response, Nowacka tweeted that “PiS’s favourite chaplain is in a political frenzy at Jasna Góra”. She also noted that religion classes are not being removed from schools, but rather reduced from two hours a week to one.

Rydzyk has long enjoyed close relations with PiS, now in opposition but which ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023, during which time Rydzyk’s various organisations received millions of zloty in state subsidies. A number of senior PiS politicians attended Sunday’s Radio Maryja pilgrimage.

Notes from Poland is run by a small editorial team and published by an independent, non-profit foundation that is funded through donations from our readers. We cannot do what we do without your support.

Main image credit: Maciek Skowronek / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

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.