The head of the Polish Church has marked the centenary of Poland's modern statehood by warning Poles their continued freedom depends on maintaining the Catholic faith and ensuring "properly conceived autonomy" between Church and state.
"Our faith supported us when, after regaining independence, we needed to find unity despite our differences, and to rebuild and defend our country with common efforts", Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, the Bishops Conference president, told state and government leaders at a Mass on Sunday in Warsaw's Divine Mercy basilica.
"A society which forgets its past loses its capacity to lay foundations for a harmonious coexistence, and for a common engagement towards future goals. Such a society becomes especially susceptible to ideological manipulation."
The archbishop said Poland needed "political renewal", not just through judicial reforms by its current government, but by withstanding "fake news" and ensuring "law and order with full conviction".
"A free politics without conflict isn't possible, since our interests, opinions and convictions compete – but a free order needs a certain political style if citizens aren't to turn from it in disgust", the Bishops Conference president said. "The state sometimes treats the Church as an instrument for achieving its ends, just as the Church sometimes uses state institutions the same way. But the Church has a duty to speak out from a meta-political position, recalling the ethical norms, principles and values the government should be guided by."
The Mass, attended by president Andrzej Duda and premier Mateusz Morawiecki, formed part of worldwide commemorations of the restoration of a Polish state in November 1918 under Marshall Jozef Pilsudski after 123 years of partition between Russia, Austria and Prussia. More than 200,000 Poles also marked the Sunday centenary with a march in Warsaw, which was addressed by President Duda but boycotted by opposition parties.
Preaching on Sunday at Gniezno, Poland's oldest Catholic see, the Church's honorary primate, Archbishop Wojciech Polak, said Poles had survived the historic partitions "thanks to their faith and culture", as well as by preserving "the sense of a community for all citizens". "Freedom means love and mercy, as well as engaging for the common good, with care for the weakest and those needing concrete help and support", said Archbishop Polak. "Love of homeland calls us to respect the rule of law and respect each other, to join rather than exclude, to unite rather than divide, to accept rather than reject".
In a message for the centenary, which included the dedication of a city-centre statue to Poland's late president, Lech Kaczynski, the Pope said independence had ended "the era of Russian, Austrian and Prussian domination over a nation which co-created Europe's Christian history", adding that he hoped Poles would "use the precious gift of freedom well in unity and peace".
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