Poland’s Church and the Border Crisis: The Long Road to Mercy

The fate of those stranded on the border with Belarus demands a reaction from Poland’s church as well. Critics accuse her of being slow and reluctant to offer help. Has the Catholic Church Failed?

The liberally governed city of Michalowo was faster: They set up a warming room in the local fire station. Then the Catholic Church also had Caritas stack donations and aid supplies not far from the de facto restricted strip at the border. Previously, the church, in the form of the Primate Wojciech Polak, had appealed in a letter to set up “humanitarian corridors” in order to provide basic necessities to migrants stuck in the border forest; It took days for the Minister of Interior to receive the written – and negative – answer in the Archdiocese of Gniezno.

At the beginning of November, months after the beginning of the crisis, the chairman of the Bishops’ Conference, Stanislaw Gadecki, publicly urged the migrants – no matter how they came to the country – to provide “spiritual and material support”; He also called for fundraising campaigns in Polish churches last Sunday.

The money is intended to finance aid in the border region, explained episcopate spokesman Leszek Gesiak. And he pointed out that Gadecki had said that the mission of the church consists primarily in the preaching of the gospel – “and therefore one cannot shirk one’s duty to help the newcomers”.

“We failed”

Some in the church are shocked at this long road to greater mercy. The PiS-critical priest Wojciech Lemanski said:

We all lost. The Polish state, the church as an institution. We’re already on the other side. We are only partially guilty, others provoked it. But we failed. The Red Cross failed the test, did not respond, and neither did the Commissioner for the Rights of the Child. It’s embarrassing. ”

Whether the parishes near the border are actually collecting donations and calling for help for the people in the surrounding forests is difficult to check because journalists are locked out of the immediate border area.

A ban on speaking for priests

In mid-October, Krzystof Boczek from the Oko.press portal was still doing research in the region. He describes the initially friendly and open encounter with a priest. When he revealed himself to him as a journalist in order to talk to him about help, the priest’s tone “totally” changed: “He – like all other priests – is forbidden to talk about it,” there is Boczek repeats the priest’s statement.

On the same day, he met a colleague who had experienced something similar: a categorical no to every conversation about helping refugees.

Great willingness to help in the population

Many people are willing to help, especially in the border region, and are now widely discussed in the media. Sociologists point to the special structure of an area that is multicultural by Polish standards; many families there have experienced escape and displacement themselves.

Doroteusz Sawicki from the Orthodox aid organization Eleos emphasizes that many people of the Orthodox faith, there are numerous there, have also become active on their own. The believers on the eastern border would have reacted immediately:

They share what they have. Food and clothing, of course always within the framework of the applicable law. That’s why they’re not trying to get these people west. You don’t see them as migrants, but as people who need help. ”

Which also has worldly blessings. Bringing people food and clothing is not forbidden, said a border guard spokeswoman recently in response to a journalist’s question.