Warsaw Bans the Cross

By
Catholic Insight
-
ngv.vic.gov.au

The secularization of Poland continues apace: The mayor of Warsaw, Rafał Trzaskowski, has now banned any public display of crosses (and any other ‘religious symbol’), including on one’s own desk at work. The Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, has called for such a ban nation-wide.

I went on pilgrimage to Poland back in 2015 with my local parish, which is under the patronage of one of the patrons of Poland, Saint Hedwig. The parish was founded by the hard-working Polish immigrants and settlers to the region back in 2014, and the pilgrimage was celebrating the parish’s hundredth anniversary.

One of the highlights of the trip was to pray at the very spot in Warsaw, on what is now known as Victory Square, where, on June 2, 1979, Pope Saint John Paul II said a public Mass, and delivered a powerful homily. A very large, prominent and public cross was placed in the centre of the square, and still stands to commemorate the epochal event.

wikipedia.org/public domain

What will happen to that cross now? Crux stat, dum volvitur orbis?

Paul Suski, a reader and contributor of Polish ancestry, offered the following quotation:

“Only under the cross, only under this sign/ Poland is Poland, and a Pole is a Pole” – a couplet taken from Karol Baliński’s 1856 poem “A Brotherly Word to Mohort’s Singer.”
As Mr. Suski continues:
In contemporary times, this rhyme straddles the realms of religion and politics, serving as a form of Christian declaration. During the martial law period (1981–1983), it was used to express resistance against the communist regime. I recall it when I attended secondary school in Poland at that time. 
We pray for Poland, and for all those Christian nations now facing the onslaught of militant atheism. May we all hold fast to the true Faith!