(September 26, 2011) With the European Union deep in economic crisis, Poland's Church
leaders celebrated a special Mass on Sunday to pray for European unity and the country's
success as it holds the EU presidency. The service in Warsaw, attended by Foreign
Minister Radek Sikorski and other political leaders, came after Polish church leaders
held similar prayers for EU unity five days earlier in Brussels. With the Masses,
the predominantly Roman Catholic country is putting its own characteristic stamp on
a bloc dominated by more secular Western European nations. The services also serve
as a reminder of the EU's huge popularity in Poland, the largest of the bloc's eastern
members. Archbishop Jozef Kowalczyk, Poland's top church leader, focused, however,
on the more spiritual aspects of European unity, referring several times to Blessed
John Paul II, the late Polish pope who inspired the struggle against communism and
who supported EU membership for his homeland. Archbishop Kowalczyk told a packed church
that he was giving thanks to John Paul's papacy for helping find themselves “in a
community of free and democratic countries building the European community.” Deputy
Prime Minister Waldemar Pawlak, told The Associated Press that while Western Europeans
are turning increasingly away from religion, it remains an important part of democratic
life in Poland, which remembers how the church was oppressed during the communist
era.