Polish mayor laid to rest as speakers call for unity

Archbishop, others direct remarks at ruling party

WARSAW, Poland — A Catholic archbishop and other speakers at the funeral Saturday of slain Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz urged an end to the political and social divisions in Poland, targeting some of their comments at the country’s ruling party.

Top Polish and European officials and thousands of citizens joined Adamowicz’s widow, two daughters and other family members at the Mass held at Gdansk’s vast Gothic St. Mary’s Basilica.

Adamowicz, 53, died Monday after being stabbed the night before at a charity event. The arrested suspect is an ex-convict who publicly voiced a grudge against an opposition party, Civic Platform, to which Adamowicz once belonged.

The slaying, which came as Poland faces a deep political divide over actions by the ruling Law and Justice party, was a shock to the nation. It has drawn calls for greater national unity and condemnation of hate speech that has intensified in public amid political rivalries.

Adamowicz himself was the target

of criticism in state media and hate messages by some far-right activists for his tolerance and openness to others regardless of their race or beliefs. He was against Poland’s refusal to accept migrants and against the government’s moves to control the judiciary. He had called Gdansk a city of “freedom and Solidarity.”

In his sermon at the funeral, Gdansk Archbishop Slawoj Leszek Glodz said Adamowicz’s death was a ringing alarm bell.

Other speakers at the church drew applause, unusual for a funeral ceremony in predominantly Catholic Poland, when they denounced hostility in public and political life.

“We will not remain indifferent to the spreading poison of hatred in the streets, in the media, in the internet, in schools, in parliament and also in the church,” said Dominican friar Ludwik Wisniewski.

“A person who is filled with hatred, who builds his career on a lie, cannot hold high positions in our country and we will make sure of that,” Wisniewski said, drawing long applause for an apparent reference to Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the ruling party leader, who did not attend the funeral.

Wojtek Strozyk The Associated Press Catholic priests bow before the urn containing the ashes of slain Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz at the start of his funeral Mass on Saturday in Gdansk, Poland.