In a January speech in the spa town of Busko-Zdrój, Nawrocki said his first official visit abroad would be to the Vatican, to pray at the tomb of Poland’s Pope John Paul II.
It was one of many occasions when he highlighted his Catholic faith. On the campaign trail, he also recited the Sermon on the Mount and visited the Polish national shrine of Jasna Góra.
In January, Nawrocki described himself as standing “on the side of the Church and freedom of religion.” That, he suggested, was in stark contrast with his rival for the presidency, Rafał Trzaskowski, who he called “a radical left-wing politician who did not hesitate to remove crucifixes from offices in the capital of Poland.”
Nawrocki was referring to a notorious incident in May 2024, when it was widely reported that Trzaskowski, the mayor of Warsaw, banned the display of religious symbols, including crucifixes, in city hall. Crucifixes are commonly displayed in civic buildings in Poland, where 71% of the population identifies as Catholic.
Trzaskowski later insisted no crucifix was removed and the decision meant only that they would not be displayed in newly opened spaces. But his support for the liberalization of Poland’s abortion laws, greater separation between Church and state, and a closer relationship with the European Union marked a sharp difference with Nawrocki.
Trzaskowski was a polished, cosmopolitan figure reputedly fluent in five languages, while Nawrocki grew up in a gritty neighborhood, engaging in soccer fan brawls and amateur boxing before gaining a doctorate and being appointed head of Poland’s Institute of National Remembrance, an influential state-funded body dedicated to preserving the country’s history.
The stakes for this year’s Polish presidential election were high not only because of the divergent visions and personalities of the two main candidates, but also due to the country’s complex political landscape.
Trzaskowski ran as the candidate of the Civic Platform party, led by Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk. Since Tusk came to power in 2023, his efforts to introduce secular, liberal changes have been constrained by the country’s president, Andrzej Duda, a practicing Catholic aligned with the opposition Law and Justice party.
Poland’s president has the power to veto legislation and Duda had promised to veto any law expanding abortion. But if Trzaskowski were to succeed Duda, he could ensure that liberalizing legislation passed unhindered.
When Poles went to the ballot box June 1 for a run-off vote between Trzaskowski and Nawrocki, they were choosing whether to allow Tusk to complete his liberal overhaul of Polish law and institutions.
Initially, it seemed they had given the green light. A 9 p.m. exit poll put Trzaskowski ahead of Nawrocki by 50.3% to 49.7%. Trzaskowski declared victory, promising to be a unifying president.
But two hours later, another poll put Nawrocki ahead. After all the votes were counted the following morning, Nawrocki had won by 50.9% to 49.1%.
A commentator at the Catholic weekly Gość Niedzielny sardonically described Trzaskowski’s brief ascendancy as “the shortest presidency in Polish history.”
The powers of a Polish president
To help understand the result’s implications for the Church, The Pillar spoke with Aleks Szczerbiak, a professor of politics at England’s University of Sussex.
In a June 5 phone interview, Szczerbiak suggested most Polish bishops would be pleased with the hard-fought victory of Nawrocki, who begins a five-year term Aug. 6.
“He’s obviously somebody who’s got a strong personal commitment to the Catholic faith and has very strong traditional moral values that accord with the Church’s teaching on many social issues,” Szczerbiak said.
“He was supported by the Law and Justice party — although he stood technically as an independent civic candidate — which has put the promotion and defense of Catholic values at the forefront of its program.”
Szczerbiak, who writes the Polish Politics Blog, stressed that Poland’s president is not involved in the country’s day-to-day governance and has a largely symbolic role, with two notable exceptions.
The first is the presidential veto, which can only be overturned by a three-fifths parliamentary majority, which no government has commanded this century.
The second is that the president can refer laws to the Constitutional Tribunal, under a mechanism known as the “preventative control” mode. Referred laws don’t come into force until the tribunal has ruled on whether legislation is compatible with the Polish Constitution, which can be a drawn-out process.
“Legislation that would liberalize the abortion law, for example, can’t come into effect if the president says he’ll veto it, and Nawrocki has made it very clear that he supports the status quo,” Szczerbiak said.
“Similarly, with legislation to introduce state-recognized same-sex civil partnerships.
He hasn’t explicitly addressed this, but he’s made it quite clear that he’s very uncomfortable about anything that, in his view, would undermine the institution of marriage as being between a man and a woman, which is what the Polish Constitution says.”
Szczerbiak said it was safe to assume Nawrocki would veto any law recognizing same-sex partnerships or allowing same-sex adoption.
Until now, such scenarios have been theoretical, because the Tusk government is an ideologically broad coalition that has been unable to agree on what kind of legislation to advance on abortion or same-sex issues.
Another subject causing anxiety among Poland’s bishops is the government’s commitment to reforming the so-called Church Fund (Fundusz Kościelny), through which the state contributes to religious groups’ charitable work, repairs to religious buildings, and clergy healthcare.
Szczerbiak said that overhauling the Church Fund would require legislation, which Nawrocki would probably be inclined to veto.
But one area where the new president is unlikely to be able to help the Church is with the government’s decision to cut back religion classes in public schools from two hours a week to one.
The classes are largely, but not exclusively, Catholic catechism classes. Catholic teachers of religion, mostly lay, need authorization (a missio canonica) from their bishop.
Poland’s bishops are incensed by the decision to halve religion classes, arguing that it violates the Polish Constitution. But they seem powerless to stop it coming into effect in September, at the start of the new school year.
The bishops also opposed an earlier change to the organization of religious education in public kindergartens and schools. In November 2024, the Constitutional Tribunal declared the change unconstitutional.
But the Tusk administration refused to publish the tribunal’s ruling in Poland’s Journal of Laws — a necessity for it to come into force. It did so because it insists the tribunal’s judges were appointed illegitimately by the previous Law and Justice government.
In February, the bishops sent a strongly worded request to Tusk, demanding an explanation for the failure to publish the ruling.
“If the president refers a law, then that stops in its tracks,” Szczerbiak explained. “If the government introduces something through secondary legislation, but another body refers it to the tribunal and the tribunal then rules on it, the government could just ignore that. So Nawrocki’s election doesn’t make a difference in that sense.”
The character question
During the presidential campaign, Nawrocki faced accusations of malfeasance that he angrily dismissed. He denied claims that he had lied about only owning one apartment and threatened to sue when a news outlet alleged he had helped procure prostitutes for guests at a hotel where he served as a security guard in his student years.
The tattooed and gun-owning 42-year-old has admitted to being involved in large organized skirmishes — known in Poland as ustawki — as a young soccer fan in Gdańsk. But he has presented these as “noble fights.”
Might Poland’s bishops have reservations about the character of Nawrocki, Poland’s first millennial president?
Szczerbiak said there was a possible analogy with U.S. President Donald Trump, whom Nawrocki admires and visited briefly during his campaign.
“You’ll get a lot of Catholics who say, well, actually the best way of getting our agenda through is through a Trump presidency, and he’ll protect us against the woke, who’ll try and censor us for talking about traditional Catholic teaching on issues like same-sex relationships, etc,” he observed.
He said Nawrocki’s supporters viewed the accusations as an electoral smear campaign. Soccer hooliganism also wasn’t a deal-breaker, because they saw it as part of the harsh environment in which Nawrocki was raised, but ultimately escaped to become a respected historian.
Will the Church be in complete harmony with Nawrocki over the next five years? Or are there some areas where they could be at odds?
Szczerbiak said the bishops would likely express divergent views on immigration to the new president, who has said he wants a law giving Polish citizens priority access ahead of migrants to public services including healthcare.
“The Church will take a different position to the one that Mr. Nawrocki takes. But this isn’t in his day-to-day competencies,” he commented.
Early analyses of the presidential election suggest committed Catholics may have tipped the balance in favor of Nawrocki.
Artur Sporniak, a journalist at the liberal-leaning Catholic weekly Tygodnik Powszechny, noted that “Poles with a Catholic worldview” continued to be influential in large parts of Poland, notably the south and east.
“Since it is already known that it was in these provinces that Karol Nawrocki won with the largest advantage, we can say that it was people with a Catholic worldview who gave him the presidency,” he told the onet.pl news website.
“I am deliberately talking about the worldview, not people who ‘believe.’ Because if we really analyze the person of the president-elect and his actions, there is a serious clash with the teachings of the Church.”
Sporniak said he was referring to Church teachings on mercy, charity, and helping the weak.
He also suggested that the bishops had intervened indirectly in the election by issuing a letter days before the first round criticizing government plans to introduce a new subject known as health education in schools.
The bishops said the curriculum, which includes sex education, was anti-family and urged parents not to “consent to the systemic depravation of your children, which is to be carried out under the pretext of so-called health education.”
The bishops would likely argue that they weren’t endorsing a presidential candidate and were simply responding to a government initiative.
Lessons for the ruling coalition
Under the Tusk government, tensions between Church and state have risen to levels arguably not seen for decades in Poland.
Will the administration change its approach following the defeat of its presidential election candidate? Szczerbiak said there was a debate within the government over what conclusions to draw from Trzaskowski’s narrow loss.
“There is a lobby that says, well, basically the reason that we lost is because we went too far away from the center ground,” he said. “Poland is still culturally very Catholic. Most people still identify with the Catholic Church. They have lots of issues about the power and the privileges that the Church has. They don’t like it when the Church is too publicly involved in politics. But culturally, they still very much identify as Catholics.”
This lobby blames the loss on an excessive focus on issues such as abortion and the rights of sexual minorities. It hopes to convince the Tusk administration to refocus on bread-and-butter political matters, toning down criticisms of the Church.
But another lobby argues the reason Trzaskowski fell short is that he didn’t embrace the government’s liberalizing agenda wholeheartedly, presenting himself instead as a moderate social conservative.
“They will say you need to double down on things like separating Church and state through things like reducing the amount of religious lessons,” Szczerbiak explained, adding it was unclear which side would win the internal debate.
A new, secular right
Looking at Poland’s political landscape more widely, another challenge is emerging for the Church.
There are many indicators that the country is rapidly secularizing, including a drop-off in seminarians and a fall in Mass attendance from 47% at the turn of the millennium to around 28% today. A 2023 report concluded that a stark generational divide is opening, with a sharp decline in religious practice among younger Poles.
In the presidential election’s first round, parties classified as far-right performed strongly. Sławomir Mentzen, the YouTube-savvy leader of the Confederation party, came third, while Grzegorz Braun, the volatile chairman of the Confederation of the Polish Crown, placed fourth.
Szczerbiak said the election marked the emergence, for the first time, of a secular right, driven largely by younger voters.
“The leaders are actually personally quite religious and socially conservative,” he said. “It’s their voters who are part of that demographic, which is the demographic that is very rapidly secularizing, that doesn’t go to Mass or identify with the Church. It’s quite socially liberal on a lot of these issues that form the Church’s social agenda.”
This slice of the electorate largely backed Mentzen in the first round, then switched to Nawrocki in the second.
Szczerbiak said the implication was that if Law and Justice wants to return to government at the next parliamentary election in 2027, it will need to appeal to secular right-wing voters as well as its practicing Catholic base.
Presenting itself as the party that upholds Christian values and respects the Church may not be enough to lead Law and Justice back to power.