Every day, a small group of protesters gathers across the street from Poland’s presidential palace.Some kneel, others weep before pictures of those who died last April when the plane carrying President Lech Kaczynski, his wife and 94 other Polish politicians and civil servants crashed in western Russia.
The demonstrators’ main focus is a simple, wooden cross of 4 meters, or 13 feet, that was erected outside the presidential palace soon after the crash in Smolensk.
They say they have no intention of giving up their vigil or of taking down the cross until a monument to Mr. Kaczynski and the other victims of the Smolensk crash is placed in front of the presidential palace.
Last month, the authorities cordoned off part of the street — one of the city’s most popular — in order to prevent clashes between supporters of the cross and thousands of young secular people who demanded that the cross be taken out of public view and moved to a church.
Since then, there has been a standoff between the demonstrators who call themselves the Defenders of the Cross and the authorities.
“The whole issue has become immensely complicated,” said Marek A. Cichocki, a lecturer at Natolin European Center in Warsaw.
“These people sitting it out on the street are all alone. There is no institution willing to negotiate a reasonable compromise. It should be the responsibility of the church and the city and the government to do that,” added Mr. Cichocki, who was Mr. Kaczynski’s foreign policy adviser.
Tensions between secular and devout Catholics are nothing new in post-Communist Poland. But these latest demonstrations by the Defenders of the Cross show how patriotism, religion and politics have become so entangled that neither the government, or for that matter the Polish Episcopate, is prepared to take any risks.
“The cross has become a religious, patriotic and political symbol that makes the demonstrators almost untouchable,” said Jacek Kucharczyk, director of the Institute of Public Affairs, an independent research organization in Warsaw.
“This is a test of the church’s influence and those political parties who hide behind the cross.”
Under Communism, the Polish Catholic Church had enormous influence. Catholicism and national identity became inseparable in the struggle against Communist rule. Both the church and society were given a huge boost when the archbishop of Krakow, Karol Wojtyla, was elected Pope John Paul II in 1978.
His visit to Poland in 1979 gave Poles the inspiration and courage to establish the independent Solidarity trade union movement that was ultimately to dislodge, peacefully, the Communists from power in 1989.
Since then, the church has fought hard to retain its status as defender of traditional values. It has found allies among the nationalist-conservative Law and Justice party led by Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the twin brother of the former president.
During the presidential campaign last June, priests urged worshipers to vote for Mr. Kaczynski, some even saying it would be a sin if worshipers voted for Bronislaw Komorowski, a supporter of the center-right Civic Platform government who was eventually elected president.
Yet when it comes to the Defenders of the Cross, the Polish Episcopate has been strangely ambiguous.
Last month, the archbishop of Warsaw, Kazimierz Nycz, suggested that the cross be moved from the presidential palace to a nearby church. He also warned against using the cross for political reasons.
“The issue got out of control during the presidential election campaign,” Archbishop Nycz said.
The Defenders of the Cross refused to budge, and so far, the church has left the cross in place. “The demonstrators have become awkward for the Polish Episcopate,” said Mr. Cichocki.
But the Polish Episcopate also hesitates to fully take up the cause of the Defenders of the Cross.
That could galvanize support for the opposition Democratic Left Alliance, or former Communist party, which has pledged to “de-clericalize” the state by barring clergy from state ceremonies, withdrawing the church’s budget allocations and curbing the clergy’s business activities and its tax exemptions.
There is another reason for the church’s ambivalence. It is grappling with child abuse cases as well as cases of priests and bishops who had collaborated with the Communist secret police — eroding the trust of many of the faithful. It simply cannot afford to alienate more believers or deter young recruits.
Over the past decade, the number of candidates for priesthood has declined 30 percent, according to the Conference of the Polish Episcopate. Admissions to the church’s 84 seminaries have plummeted 30 percent in the past three years.
Admissions to female religious orders have halved, falling 15 percent last year alone. And even though nine-tenths of Poland’s 38 million inhabitants still call themselves Roman Catholics, the majority follow their own interpretation of the church’s pronouncements on moral issues, according to opinion polls.
Because of these problems, Mr. Cichocki says the church has shown little courage in trying to end the dispute over the cross.
But neither has Donald Tusk, the prime minister and leader of Civic Platform. Without informing the demonstrators or the public, Mr. Tusk recently and almost secretly unveiled a commemorative plaque to the Smolensk victims on the wall of the Presidential Palace.
He said he hoped it would end the dispute, but that clearly has not happened.
The longer the government and the church allow the dispute to drag on, the more likely the Defenders of the Cross and the Law and Justice party will use it to gain support before parliamentary elections next year.
This will only sharpen the divisions between secularists and the church, said Mr. Kucharczyk.
Unless the Polish Episcopate, the president and the government negotiate, the victims of the Smolensk crash will become pawns for political and religious interests, he added.
SIC: NYT/USA