An address to the Polish and Russian nations was read in churches across Poland on Sunday.The original document was signed on 17 August during the first visit to Poland of the Patriarch of Moscow and All-Russia Kirill I.
The Russian spiritual leader had been invited to Warsaw by head of the Polish Episcopate Archbishop Jozef Michalik.
The appeal is meant as a stimulus for starting dialogue between the two nations, shunning animosities in a spirit of mutual forgiveness of historical injustices.
Representatives of both Churches had been working on the declaration for two years.
The document echoes the famed letter of reconciliation sent by Polish bishops to their German counterparts in 1965.
That letter, which declared that “we forgive, and ask for forgiveness,” was the first significant attempt at reconciliation between Poland and Germany since the Second World War.
Speaking at the signing ceremony at the Royal Castle in Warsaw last month, Archbishop Michalik said that the intention of the address to the Polish and Russian nations is not to give rise to attempts of squaring accounts nor making excuses for wrongs of the past.
Rather, it symbolised a yearning for a better, more secure and mutually honest future.
Patriarch Kirill, on his part, referred to the appeal as a manifestation of spiritual engagement and adherence to Christian values, which call for reconciliation among Russians and Poles, overcoming negative stereotypes that have accumulated throughout centuries of difficult history.
Spokesman for the Conference of the Polish Episcopate, Father Jozef Kloch underscores that the document should not be treated as an act of reconciliation between hierarchs of the two countries, but a message to all the faithful to treat each other as true brothers and friends.