The devout inhabitants of Swiebodzin in conservative western Poland have recently been featured in the global news media by out-competing the iconic Brazilian statue of Christ in Rio de Janeiro:
Holy unveiling - The world’s largest statue of Christ was unveiled last Sunday in the western town of Swiebodzin. Standing at an impressive 52 metres and weighing 440 tons, the total project cost an approximate PLN 4.5 mln. “It looks amazing,” said one woman who was there to witness the ceremony. “That’s the only word I can use to describe it.” But not everyone is in agreement. Some have argued that the money could have been spent more wisely and that the statue borders on “megalomania”. A group of faithful gathers around the giant Christ statue soaring 36 metres (118 feet) towards the heavens. The Christ of Swiebodzin wears a crown of gold dethroned the landmark Jesus of Rio de Janeiro as the world's tallest statue of Christ.
Two items in the news this week testify to Poland’s gradual emergence as a liberal democratic and increasingly tolerant society. The first is from the BBC website:
John Abraham Godson, a Polish citizen born and raised in Nigeria, has been sworn in as the first black member of Poland's parliament. Mr Godson had served as a councillor in the city of Lodz before taking up a parliamentary seat, vacated by a party colleague after local elections. His entry into parliament has created a media stir in the mainly white country. He came to Poland in the 1990s, opening an English-language school and working as a pastor in a Protestant church. He has since married a Polish woman and the couple have four children.
A member of the centre-right Civic Platform party, he was appointed to the seat vacated by party colleague Hanna Zdanowska after she became mayor of Lodz. It is still quite rare to see black people even in the Polish capital Warsaw, Poland's most cosmopolitan city. Racism is still a problem in Poland, where it is not uncommon for well-educated people to make racist jokes. Mr Godson was beaten up twice in the early 1990s but he says attitudes to black people in Poland are changing for the better, particularly since the country joined the EU six years ago. Speaking earlier to Polish radio, Mr Godson said: "I am from Lodz, I will live here, I want to die here and I want to be buried here." I could mirror these sentiments, except possibly inserting a preference to be cremated!
The second item was the news of the first lesbian marriage of two Polish women. Admittedly, it took place in Sweden, but it was featured in a documentary film on a much watched TVN private channel and also on the news on the two state TV channels. Slowly the gay rights movement is establishing itself despite Kaczynski’s PiS party and Catholic Church condemnations. We saw the programme the day after we had watched the biographical film about Harvey Milk, brilliantly played by Sean Penn, controversially a ‘straight’ actor. Milk was the first openly gay man to be elected to public office in the US, in San Francisco in the mid-70s and soon afterwards was made into a martyr when he and the open-minded mayor were assassinated by a rival politician. It will probably be 50 years after the US took this big step forward that such an event will happen here in Poland, but the advance into the political arena of a different, but also abused, minority figure, John Godson, moves us forward towards a greater degree of tolerance, despite the entrenched values of the still dominant church who teach love but deny the right of many to express it.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
PO ascendent in local elections; Catholic Church exploits the Internet
In the November local elections in Poland, the rank order of results predicted in the run up to the elections by the New Poland Express were accurate, although the margins predicted by the polls were, as usual not so wide and PiS nationally managed 23% against Platforma’s 32%. The SLD managed 15% as did the Peasants’ party (PSL) the latter’s best ever results. Of course in the local elections there are many minor party and locally independent candidates who take the rest of the votes. In Tychy the PO president was re-elected deservedly as he has greatly enhanced the public spaces and amenities of our town in recent years.
Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party looks set for a comfortable win in Sunday’s local elections with the main opposition party in disarray after a number of its members abandoned ship. As the clock ticks down to the weekend vote, opinion polls give Civic Platform (PO) a commanding 18 percent lead over Law and Justice (PiS) with 38 percent of the vote. To make matters worse for PiS, the polls give it just a slender lead over the third place party, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), while another poll shows that 44 percent of the electorate has a negative opinion of the party. Although Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the PiS leader, can take heart that in the past opinion polls have tended to underestimate the support his party actually enjoys, when the results come in, the broad gap lead PO enjoys over PiS will heap more woe on the embattled party. In the past few weeks a steady trickle of its members have abandoned the PiS colours, and some of them have now formed a new political association: a move that many political commentators have interpreted as the first step to forming a rival political party to PiS. Entitled ‘Poland is the Most Important’ (‘Polska jest najwazniejsza’), its president is Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska - a leading light in the PiS ranks before she was recently expelled. Speaking at a press conference she said that PiS had failed to provide serious opposition to PO.
One can hope that this is yet another demonstration of the decreasing popularity of the paranoid PiS leader.
The next NPE snippet shows how the Catholic Church in Poland is exploiting the internet:
“Churches are now looking to the internet in an attempt to reach out to people. The parish of St.
Wojciecha in Lublin already has an ‘on-line congregation’ of 40 but is hoping to recruit more as the word spreads. “Establishing our Facebook profile was a joint decision by all our priests. While the
Head Vicar acts as administrator, I do take a look in from time to time,” says Father Jacek Wargocki.
“The creation of our profile does not mean it will replace the activity of parishioners or the personal participation in Mass,” adds Fr. Wargocki. “It can only be used as a supplement to everyday religious
practices.” But this new trend is not consigned to just a few parishes. Adam Bugiel, owner of webkoncept.pl, says that an increasing number of churches are beginning to get onboard the social networking bandwagon. “Contrary to popular belief, priests are very receptive to technological innovations”.
Donald Tusk’s Civic Platform party looks set for a comfortable win in Sunday’s local elections with the main opposition party in disarray after a number of its members abandoned ship. As the clock ticks down to the weekend vote, opinion polls give Civic Platform (PO) a commanding 18 percent lead over Law and Justice (PiS) with 38 percent of the vote. To make matters worse for PiS, the polls give it just a slender lead over the third place party, the Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), while another poll shows that 44 percent of the electorate has a negative opinion of the party. Although Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the PiS leader, can take heart that in the past opinion polls have tended to underestimate the support his party actually enjoys, when the results come in, the broad gap lead PO enjoys over PiS will heap more woe on the embattled party. In the past few weeks a steady trickle of its members have abandoned the PiS colours, and some of them have now formed a new political association: a move that many political commentators have interpreted as the first step to forming a rival political party to PiS. Entitled ‘Poland is the Most Important’ (‘Polska jest najwazniejsza’), its president is Joanna Kluzik-Rostkowska - a leading light in the PiS ranks before she was recently expelled. Speaking at a press conference she said that PiS had failed to provide serious opposition to PO.
One can hope that this is yet another demonstration of the decreasing popularity of the paranoid PiS leader.
The next NPE snippet shows how the Catholic Church in Poland is exploiting the internet:
“Churches are now looking to the internet in an attempt to reach out to people. The parish of St.
Wojciecha in Lublin already has an ‘on-line congregation’ of 40 but is hoping to recruit more as the word spreads. “Establishing our Facebook profile was a joint decision by all our priests. While the
Head Vicar acts as administrator, I do take a look in from time to time,” says Father Jacek Wargocki.
“The creation of our profile does not mean it will replace the activity of parishioners or the personal participation in Mass,” adds Fr. Wargocki. “It can only be used as a supplement to everyday religious
practices.” But this new trend is not consigned to just a few parishes. Adam Bugiel, owner of webkoncept.pl, says that an increasing number of churches are beginning to get onboard the social networking bandwagon. “Contrary to popular belief, priests are very receptive to technological innovations”.
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