“Not a day goes by without the media reporting new acts of violence: against children and youth, against women and against migrants — particularly Ukrainians,” the Archbishop of Krakow, Cardinal Grzegorz Rys, said.
“Seeing our status, authority, and influence slipping away, we become ever more determined to defend them — stamping our feet, shouting, and making demands. The weaker our position, the greater the aggression.”
The Cardinal was reacting to reports of a sharp rise in attacks this year on Ukrainians, who fled to neighbouring Poland in huge numbers after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
He said that political and social relations in Poland were currently “rife with aggression, grievance, abuse of power and force”, and urged Poles to show concern “for the little ones rather than the great and powerful”.
Dozens of Roman Catholic clergy have signed an open letter, which praises the sacrifice of Ukrainians in “defending their freedom” and calls for an end to the “hatred and contempt”.
“Words of contempt lead to threats and acts of violence — a person becomes an enemy just because they speak a different language, pray by a different rite, or were born on the other side of a border,” the letter from “Ordinary Sisters and Ordinary Priests” says. “We do not want a Poland in which a person is afraid to speak their own language, send their child to school, or work honestly.”
Up to 3.4 million Ukrainians sought refuge in Poland, a country of 37.7 million, within months of the invasion, the Polish Metropolitan Union reported in May 2022, and they remain the country’s largest minority by far.
Bilateral ties have deteriorated this summer, after the Polish President, Karol Nawrocki, stripped his Ukrainian counterpart, President Zelensky, of Poland’s highest honour, the White Eagle, for naming a military unit after the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, or UPA, held responsible for massacring Poles during the Second World War.
Anti-violence protests have been held across Poland, after police reports of a 30-per-cent rise in anti-Ukrainian hate crimes, fuelled by political rhetoric and social media.
The head of the Ukrainian Catholic Apostolic Exarchate of Germany and Scandinavia, Bishop Bohdan Dzyurach, wrote to thank Cardinal Rys and other clergy for “sounding a prophetic voice from the heart of the Polish Church and Polish people”.