Defenders Of The Cross

Since that inexplicable tragedy near Smoleńsk on April 10 this year, we have been witnesses to the evolution of people's relation to the cross that has been erected by Polish scouts in front of presidential palace in Warsaw, which for a long time was a place bringing together all Poles and other people sympathizing with us, commemorating that sad event, praying for the victims and for the nation, expressing their pride and patriotism...

Things have changed gradually after the state funeral of presidential couple on Wawel Hill and after funeral services for other victims of that horrible crash. The cross has become a division bell for our nation, splitting people into fractions, used by some politically and by some to ridicule the faith, by others to oppose its transfer to the church fearing that no memorial would be erected there for the commemoration of the loss our nation suffered on that tragic day near Smoleńsk, on the day our President was leading national delegation to commemorate 70th Anniversary of Katyń Massacre near Smoleńsk.

It is such a sad picture especially for us who remember another cross which our fathers and mothers, relatives and neighbors were defending, ready to die, opposing the idea of communist government in Poland to create the first city without God in Poland - Nowa Huta, adjacent city to Kraków, which was seen as a cradle of reaction, opposition and capitalism. The city to kill the spirit of Kraków by bringing a flood of workers from other parts of Poland, thus watering down the strength of the Royal Capital of Poland...

I was born in Nowa Huta in 1963. There was  no permanent church at that time in a city of 200 thousand people... I was baptized in a shack, kind of a temporary chapel. Then, in front of it, on the pavement, under a sun, I received my First Communion...

 My Godparents with me right outside the chapel after Baptismal Mass

Then after defending the cross, erected in a place where now there is a new church (it is some 200 meters from an apartment block I was living in with my parents, Grandma and younger brother for the first 19 years of my life), the authorities allowed to build the first church. In this new church, called famously The Ark of the Lord, I was confirmed.

Now, there are several parishes after dividing our mother parish into smaller ones. So, the area I was living in, belongs to the new parish, the Sacred Heart of Jesus parish, with the parochial church build in the vicinity of the events of the fight for the right to worship God publicly in our city... Those events have been commemorated by a monument erected right by this new church.

I had an opportunity to pay my respect to the defenders of the cross in Nowa Huta, when I went to visit the parish priest of my originally home parish last Monday. This visit evoked a stream of memories and emotions for sure. The easiness to enter the church and pray stroke me hard as I recalled those past times of fight and thereafter the construction of the very first church. Everything seemed to be so peaceful and natural and the Sacred Heart of Jesus church looked so beautifully thought out and constituting an intrinsic part of the neighborhood... But all this was possible because of the resolve and the fight of the people of Nowa Huta who refused to tore God from their hearts when their new city was being built. Hats off to heroes! We owe them so much!

It is my hope that the cross, the sign of total love, sacrifice and selfishness, will continue to unify us, Poles, instead of dividing as it happening now in Warsaw...Shame, we, Poles, sometimes have very short memory and fail to learn proper history lessons...