The Polish Church has intensified conflict with the country’s current government by announcing a nationwide Sunday collection for migrants and refugees currently barred from crossing the eastern border with Belarus.
“The Church’s primary mission lies in proclaiming the Gospel, so when it’s necessary to provide help for newcomers, we must not avoid this,” said Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki, the bishops’ conference president. “Without prejudicing the security of the Polish republic and its citizens, we must demonstrate solidarity with people in need. In the present situation, the message of the Good Samaritan parable becomes ever more urgent and awaits universal implementation.”
The Archbishop issued his appeal as Polish officials accused President Alexander Lukashenko’s discredited government in Belarus of risking a major confrontation by encouraging thousands of migrants to continue massing on the border.
Gadecki said the Polish Church had attempted to help the migrants “in line with its possibilities” via its Caritas charity, through aid to refugee centres and local border parishes. However, he added that “much more” was needed, and said a collection would be raised at all Sunday Masses to support the “long-term integration of refugees deciding to stay in Poland”.
A state of emergency was declared on the Belarus border by President Andrzej Duda in September, after Polish and European Union claims that the Lukashenko regime had bussed refugees from Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan to the area in retaliation for Western sanctions over human rights abuses in Belarus.
However, aid agencies have also accused Poland of blocking proper asylum procedures and contributing to at least eight refugee deaths from hypothermia and exhaustion, after it deployed 12,000 troops with razor wire and announced plans for a 65-mile border wall to deter attempted crossings.
The head of Poland’s Catholic military ordinariate, Bishop Jozef Guzdek, also urged prayers at the weekend for suffering migrants, as well as for troops and border forces tasked with policing the current crisis. Internet videos have shown refugees in Belarus’s Grodno region cutting barbed-wire border fences in a bid to enter Poland, as nearby Lithuania and Latvia also expressed alarm at a migrant build-up on their frontiers.
Loading ...
