Poles at odds with Pope over immigrants

Pope Francis arrived in Krakow on Wednesday amid tensions with the Polish Government over welcoming migrants, an issue he has made a central concern of his papacy, writes Christopher Lamb. Just days before his arrival to celebrate World Youth Day, a Vatican statement accused some politicians in the country of fuelling “an artificially created fear of Muslims” through inappropriate public interventions.

A press release written in Italian by the Polish bishops’ spokesman, Fr Pawel Rytel-Andrianik, was distributed by the Holy See press office and reported by numerous international news outlets.

But soon after its release Fr Rytel-Andrianik partially disowned his statement saying it was not the official position of the Polish bishops but a “summary of the media debate” in the country.

While the statement might initially have been read as an attempt to bring the bishops on to the same page as Francis on migration, the subsequent backtracking will raise questions about the closeness between Poland’s Catholic hierarchy and the ruling Law and Justice party. The party is anti-immigration and has refused to accept a European Union quota of refugees.

The Pope has repeatedly urged Europe to welcome migrants, making an impassioned appeal last September for every parish and religious house in the continent to house at least one family.

Fr Rytel-Andrianik pointed out that Poland is “ethnically homogeneous” and so great fears exist about migrants. His Vatican statement stressed that the Polish bishops had made an appeal to help refugees a day before the Pope made his, on 6 September, and that the Church had welcomed refugees from the Middle East and North Africa.

But his text also included a line from a homily by the Archbishop of Poznan, Stanislaw Gadecki (pictured below), interpreting the Pope’s policy on migrants. “Pope Francis is in favour of a policy of integration, and not that of multi-culturalism desired by elements on the left,” the archbishop is quoted as saying on 10 July. The question of welcoming migrants is one that the Pope was expected to address during a prayer vigil he will attend today.

On Wednesday evening Francis was due to have a behind-closed-doors meeting with the Polish bishops where he was not expected to give a formal speech but take part in an informal dialogue, a move that hints at other tensions between him and the hierarchy.

(See Jonathan Luxmoore, page 10.)