Archbishop Polak on the challenges of the Church in Poland
The challenges of the Church in Poland: migratory, post-pandemic and related to the crisis of the Church's credibility in Poland, were mentioned by Archbishop Wojciech Polak, Archbishop of Gniezno, and Primate of Poland, during a briefing at the Vatican Radio headquarters to begin the ad limina apostolorum visit of the third group of bishops.
Archbishop Polak admitted that the first steps that the bishops took to the tomb of St. Peter, guide their entire stay on the ad limina visit. "We want to be cum Petro et sub Petro, that is, to be with St Peter and listen to what St Peter has to say to us," he emphasized.
The Primate of Poland noted that there are two groups of issues with which bishops come to Rome. “The first group is the challenges that we all face and which very concretely mark our pastoral response in Poland to these challenges. The first is the great migration challenge - what we see today on the eastern border of Poland - and not only there, ” he stressed. He added that the Church in Poland was very much involved in helping Afghans in refugee camps in Poland.
The second challenge for the Church, admitted Archbishop Polak, is the situation after the pandemic. “The way Pope Francis tells us to take courage for a new pastoral effort. It is about a newly started synodal process, ”he added.
The third challenge for the Church, in the opinion of Archbishop Polak is faced with issues related to the crisis of the Church's credibility. "We want to find a specific way to increase the credibility of the Church in Poland through clear-cut problems that we struggle with in various fields," he said.
Speaking about the visit to the Congregation for the Laity, Family and Life, H.E Grzegorz Kaszak, Bishop of Sosnowiec, noted that the talks were, amongst other things, about the scourge of divorce, which Poland is also struggling with, the demographic problem, language, and communication with young people on issues such as marriage, family and life.
The third group includes bishops from: the Archdiocese of Warsaw with the Dioceses of Warsaw-Prague, Płock and the Military Chaplaincy; the Archdiocese of Gniezno with the Diocese of Bydgoszcz and Włocławek, the Archdiocese of Łódź with the Diocese of Łowicz; the Archdiocese of Częstochowa with the Diocese of Radom and Sosnowiec and the Greek Catholic dioceses: the Archdiocese of Przemyśl-Warsaw, the Diocese of Wrocław-Koszalin and the Diocese of Olsztyn-Gdańsk.
Press Office of the Polish Bishops' Conference
