Socially conservative church awaits Francis in Poland
Pope’s welcoming message, on immmigration in particular, clashes with country’s traditional views
When Pope Francis arrives in Poland this week to attend World Youth Day, one of the major events on the Catholic calendar, he will face a politically powerful church closely tied to the country’s new right-wing government. The church here carries a deep strain of social conservatism that does not always align with the pope’s more open and welcoming views.
“Poland has more parishes than it has hospitals and schools,” said Tadeusz Bartos, a theologian at the Academy of Humanities in Pultusk. “It is everywhere. In small communities, the priest and the mayor are the two most important figures.”
Ninety-two percent of Poles identify themselves as Roman Catholic. But equally striking is the degree to which many of them attend church on a weekly basis: about 40 percent, church officials estimate, far higher than in other nominally Catholic countries.
“Our religion is now alive in Poland in a way that it is not in Western Europe,” said Jaroslaw Sellin, the deputy minister of culture and national heritage from the governing party Law and Justice. “We organize our lives from birth to death with a series of religious ceremonies.”
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Jozef Wojtyla in Wadowice, Poland, and canonized in 2014, remains among the most venerated and beloved figures in his country’s history. World Youth Day, which is being held in Krakow and which takes place every two or three years, was begun by him in 1985.
But the current pope’s more tolerant and inclusive language — preaching a welcoming message to gays and refugees, for instance, and opening a way for divorced Catholics to receive the sacraments — is sometimes at odds with the way the faith is taught and understood in Poland.
“We need to understand that the Polish Catholic Church, and a majority of Catholic Church clerics, are not so close to Pope Francis,” said Michal Boni, a member of the European Parliament representing Civic Platform, the centerright party that governed Poland for eight years before being soundly defeated by Law and Justice in elections last fall. “The church is changing, and I think many leaders of the Polish church are not in line with the direction of that change.”
Polish church officials reject this interpretation, saying they remain, as always, in line with the Vatican, and they dispute that the church here is driven by a desire for political power.
“The pope does not look on the left or on the right, but looks up,” said the Rev. Pawel Rytel-Andrianik, a spokesman for the Conference of the Polish Episcopate. “In our mentality, the pope is the pope. Every Pole has two capitals, Warsaw and Rome.”
And while there may be a shift in tone from this pope, it has not yet been matched by fundamental changes in church doctrine.
“I don’t find there are any deviations from official teachings,” Sellin said. “For Catholics, what is important is not his private opinions but his official teaching.” One issue that is troubling to many Polish clerics, said Jaroslaw Makowski, a historian, theologian and Civic Platform member, is the pope’s insistence on a humble lifestyle for priests. “Every time he talked about the need to be poor and modest, he hit a nerve with a Polish clergy that is known for its lavish lifestyle,” Makowski said.
No one expects that there will be any open discord during the pope’s four-day trip to Krakow, which is scheduled to begin Thursday and will include a visit to Auschwitz and to the monastery of Jasna Gora, Poland’s most revered pilgrimage site. But eyes will be alert for any signs of dissonance. “Church leaders are a bit confused,” said Bartos, the theologian. “They don’t know how to behave. They know they cannot oppose him openly. But they don’t feel protected by this pope. They feel accused.”
When politics clashes with the desires of the church, though, the new government still attends to popular will.
This year, pro-government legislators proposed strengthening Poland’s already strict abortion laws by imposing a complete ban, without exception.
That led to large street protests, and the proposed legislation was quickly shelved, though some expect it to be revived whenever Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the dominant leader of the Law and Justice Party, feels the time is right.
“Kaczynski is a very pragmatic and cynical politician, so as soon as he realized how big the political cost of a total abortion ban would be, he withdrew his support, at least temporarily,” Makowski said.
One issue on which the church and the new government have taken different positions is immigration.
In last year’s election, Law and Justice took a hard-line stance against admitting refugees into Poland, with Kaczynski speaking darkly about terrorism and disease.
But the Polish church has echoed Pope Francis on the subject, arguing that those fleeing war and persecution should be welcomed.
A statement, written by Rytel-Andrianik and released over the weekend by the Vatican, criticizes Poland for its anti-Muslim climate, placing the blame on a lack of public debate on the issue, overly complicated immigration rules and no program for teaching diversity.
“Unfortunately, these fears are fueled by some political parties and inappropriate statements made by politicians,” the statement said.
Makowski said, “If the pope says the face of refugees is the face of Christ, then there is not much Polish bishops can say except call on the government to take in refugees.”