LGBT activist held over use of Black Madonna image

The detention in Poland on Tuesday last week of an LBGT activist over her use in her campaigning of Poland’s most revered religious icon, the Black Madonna, has divided opinion in the country and in the Church, writes James Roberts.

Elzbieta Podlesna, 51, is well known in the women’s movement, and an opponent of the ruling nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party (PiS). The Black Madonna, the icon of the Virgin Mary with baby Jesus, in a shrine at Jasna Gora Monastery in Czestochowa, is one of Poland’s national treasures. At the end of last month, posters of the Black Madonna adorned with a gay-rainbow-coloured halo started appearing in public.

Prosecutors in the city of Plock said Podlesna had been questioned and “heard charges” of hurting religious feelings and of desecrating the icon. Her apartment was reportedly raided and her phone and computers seized. Police questioned her for some hours before she was released.

Podlesna told the TVN24 station on 7 May: “This is not an attack on religion, certainly not an attack on faith”. She said her protest was against the Church’s “intolerance” on the LGBT issue.

Interior Minister Joachim Brudzinski praised the police and condemned the “desecration of the image of Our Lady, which has been considered sacred by Poles for centuries”. But Amnesty International and the Warsaw-based Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights condemned the police action, saying Podlesna’s action had been “peaceful”.

In an open letter to the bishops’ conference, liberal Catholics also criticised the police. The letter quoted PiS leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski at an election campaign event, when he equated attacks against the Church with attacks against Poland, calling this “monopolisation of the Church and country by a political party”.

The Church had not responded as The Tablet went to press.