"Hitler is dead but Putin is alive and he is repeating history with the Ukrainians," declared Stanislaw Fidurski, a 95-year-old retired colonel at Friday's march, which was led by four hussars dressed in historical costumes.

He said Poland could form a larger state with Ukraine — an idea supported by two septuagenarians Marek and Piotr who said it would help Warsaw to "resist Russia". Read more

Ania Bielawska and Lukasz Stanek drew profanities on their naked bodies. They then paraded in front of photographers at the Presidential Palace in Warsaw.

Their demonstration was short-lived as police quickly wrapped them in blankets and led them away.

The Constitutional Tribunal last month banned terminations due to foetal defects, ending one of the few legal grounds left for abortion.

This type of abortion accounts for almost all of the small number of abortions performed legally in Poland.

Thousands have taken to Polish streets almost every day since. These have been the largest protests since the fall of communism.

While primarily demanding abortion rights, the protests have also expressed deep-seated anger at Poland's nationalist rulers.

The demonstrations also highlight the divisions between liberals and religious conservatives in the staunchly Catholic country.

The Law and Justice (PiS) party has ruled Poland since 2015. The party has been accused of eroding democratic norms during its time in power.

Protesters have ignored a ban on gatherings of more than five people, intended to slow the spread of coronavirus, and have come out in force.

More than 100,000 people gathered in the streets of Warsaw on Friday evening for the largest gathering so far. They shouted pro-choice and anti-PiS slogans.

But, in the last few days, Poland's right wing government has announced a delay in implementing the controversial court ruling. It is thought the growing public discontent has forced this delay.

"There is a discussion going on, and it would be good to take some time for dialogue and for finding a new position in this situation, which is difficult and stirs high emotions," Michał Dworczyk, the head of the prime minister's office, told Polish media on Tuesday.

The prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki, has called for talks with protesters and opposition MPs about the Polish abortion law. The PiS-aligned president, Andrzej Duda, suggested a new proposal that would allow abortion in cases of life-threatening birth defects but not for conditions such as Down's syndrome.

Sources

Reuters

The Guardian

Since 966, Poland has often been Antemurale Christianitatis, the bulwark of Christianity against invasion, and has time and again defended our civilization.

Now is the perfect opportunity to revisit the always dramatic, constantly inspiring, and often tragic history of the faith in this land that is the crossroads between East and West.

Europe is largely a manmade concept, and the border between Europe and Asia is more cultural than geographic. In the Middle Ages, becoming part of Europe involved accepting Christianity.

This happened in Poland when the nation's Duke Mieszko I of the Piast dynasty was baptized in 966. As a result, the Holy Roman Emperor and other European rulers recognized Poland as a part of the European family.

In his book Memory and Identity, Pope St. John Paul II noted that while religious wars and persecutions raged across Europe, his native Poland was an oasis of tolerance. The Kingdom of Poland, which eventually came into a dynastic union with Lithuania and became the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth following the Union of Lublin in 1569, was a place to which persecuted religious groups flocked.

Two-thirds of the world's Jews trace their ancestry to Poland; while in the rest of Europe Jews were walled in ghettoes or expelled, they were given privileges by the Polish kings. Numerous Armenian merchants settled in Poland, as did radical Protestant sects.

Following the Reformation, most Polish nobles (who constituted up to 10 percent of the nation's population, the highest proportion anywhere in Europe) adopted Calvinism, although most reverted to Catholicism thanks to the efforts of the Jesuits.

In 1596, a group of Ukrainian Orthodox bishops in Poland entered into a union with Rome, forming the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, the largest Eastern rite church today. Overall, only about 40 percent of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth's population consisted of Roman Catholic Poles. Continue reading

Sources

• Article by Filip Mazurczak, assistant editor of the European Conservative and a correspondent for the National Catholic Register in The Catholic World Report.
• Image: Catholic Herald

Just past the Polish border, passengers traveling by train from Berlin to Warsaw can see Jesus. He is 36-meters (118 feet) tall, made of concrete, and towers over the surrounding fields near the town of Swiebodzin, a gilded crown perched nobly on his head. His gaze is directed over the Recaro plant, which makes car seats and is the region's biggest employer, and toward the setting sun. His outstretched arms seem to suggest that he wishes to take the Western heathens into his heart.

The plaque at the base of the giant religious statue says that Jesus Christ is the true king of Poland and will rule for eternity. It is not for nothing that the country is, in the eyes of the church at least, Europe's most Catholic nation.

Yet despite the monumental redeemer, Swiebodzin has not become a pilgrimage site. "The statue has not triggered a tourism boom yet," confirms Waldemar Roszczuk, editor-in-chief of the city's newspaper and publisher of a regional Internet publication.

Much to the annoyance of Father Sylwester Zawadzki, who is responsible for the socialist-realist version of Christ. That, in any case, is what Roszczuk reports. Christ's realm is not necessarily of this world, he says, at least in Swiebodzin.

"The majority of the population is against this monument, but no one says so openly," he says. Most locals, he suggests, are concerned about the baptism or first communion of their children and "would rather not spoil things with Father Zawadzki."

Some 95 percent of all Poles still say that they are Catholic. Yet loyalty to the church is waning. Even the conservative Catholic publicist Tomasz Terlikowski estimates the true number of devout Catholics at little more than 20 percent. "We Poles like to proclaim our Catholicism," he says, but the reality looks quite different. Read more

Sources

• Spiegel Online International
• Image: nomadlife