"What happened to the body of your father and husband is a further deep pain and wound on top of still-recent injuries," Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz told the family of another victim, Ryszard Kaczorowski, Poland's last London-based president-in-exile in 1989-90.
The cardinal was preaching at Mr Kaczorowski's second funeral, in Warsaw's Divine Providence basilica, which was held after the mix-up was revealed.
Mr Kaczorowski died, aged 90, alongside President Lech Kaczynski and 94 others when their plane crashed attempting to land at Smolensk in 2010 for anniversary commemorations of the 1940 Soviet massacre of interned Polish officers at nearby Katyn Forest.