A Polish bishop has declared, during a homily given at Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine, that the country “is ruled by political gangsters”, warning of the dangers of irregular migration which will lead to the “Islamisation of Europe”.
Wiesław Mering, bishop emeritus of Wlocławek, spoke on Sunday at the annual pilgrimage organised by the Catholic broadcaster Radio Maria to Jasna Góra monastery in Częstochowa, which is home to the famous Black Madonna icon and is Poland’s holiest Catholic shrine.
“Our borders are threatened from both west and east,” said Mering, referring to a migration crisis engineered by Belarus on Poland’s eastern border and the return of thousands of illegal migrants to Poland by Germany from the west.
Last Monday, Poland reinstated border controls with Germany and Lithuania, citing a spike in migrants being pushed back by German authorities.
In recent days, self‑declared “citizen patrols", some reported to number in the hundreds, have gathered on the Polish side of the German border, claiming to prevent migrant returns sent by Berlin.
The fracas over these patrols has been causing political upheaval in Poland. While the centrist government is telling the vigilantes to go home, conservative nationalist President-elect Karol Nawrocki is praising them.
In response to Bishop Mering, foreign minister Radosław Sikorski accused him of “inciting against refugees”, which he said was “intellectually inconsistent” given that the church’s “founder was a refugee”.
At the same pilgrimage on Saturday, 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 [the 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.
“Poland is now ruled by political gangsters,” added the bishop, claiming that Tusk himself had said this. The prime minister was, in fact, referring to the former Law and Justice (PiS) government.
Mering also said that “schools are being destroyed by barbarism” because the government is “removing patriotic and national content”.
Despite the fact that Jasna Gora monastery in 2020 issued rules banning political speeches, Mering 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”.
Again, 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, a virulently left-wing pro-abortion feminist.
“What are you thinking, you woman?” he asked. “We Catholics, let us not allow [anyone] to spit on the church and God,” said 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 “[The Law and Justice party'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 the socially conservative pro-Church Law and Justice party, now in opposition but which ruled Poland from 2015 to 2023, during which time Rydzyk’s various organisations are alleged to have received millions of zloty in state subsidies. A number of senior the Law and Justice party's politicians attended Sunday’s Radio Maryja pilgrimage.
(Photo credit: Twitter screenshot @niedziela_pl)
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