President Bronislaw Komorowski has invited Pope Benedict XVI to visit Poland for the 1050th anniversary of the adoption of Christianity in the country. In a letter to the pontiff, Komorowski underlined the success of the previous visit of Pope Benedict in 2006.
“We would be honoured and delighted to welcome the Holy Father to our homeland once again, sharing with Him our joys and concerns,” the president wrote.
Technically, the 1050th anniversary of Poland taking up the Christian faith falls in 2016, but the celebrations are due to begin the previous year, when it is hoped that Pope Benedict would come.
The Polish Episcopate has also sent a separate invitation, and Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, Archbishop of Warsaw, told the Polish Press Agency that the planned celebrations could outshine the 1000th anniversary, which fell during the era of communist rule in Poland.
“Pope Pawel VI could not come to the celebrations of the 1000th anniversary of the adoption of Christianity in Poland, because the communist authorities did not give their permission,” he recalled.
Cardinal Nycz noted that as regards the prospective visit of Pope Benedict, it is “a joint invitation from the head of state and the Episcopate.”