Poland prays for European Union

(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.