I will always be grateful to Archbishop Gadecki for leading the Polish bishops to do what almost no one else did in the Western Church: he refused to shut down the Churches in Poland during COVID. He started it when the local Poznan government ordered the closures. In a sharp rebuke of the government, Gadecki stated he had ordered his pr…
I will always be grateful to Archbishop Gadecki for leading the Polish bishops to do what almost no one else did in the Western Church: he refused to shut down the Churches in Poland during COVID. He started it when the local Poznan government ordered the closures. In a sharp rebuke of the government, Gadecki stated he had ordered his priests to celebrate more Masses, both because more prayers were needed during the pandemic and because he did not want the limits on church attendance to prevent anyone from attending Mass at least once a week. Polish Catholics were not deprived of any Sacraments during COVID. I think his leadership is equal to that of Wyszynski and Wojtyla, because he showed that the Church must always resist governmental and societal threats to its functioning in serving the people of God.
Strangely enough, Gadecki when elected Vice President and President of the Polish Bishops Conference was considered a liberal (though in Poland that really means moderately conservative), having been known mostly for his ecumenical work with the Jewish community. That he became such a staunch warrior for orthodoxy reminds me of Cardinal Mueller, who was friends and sympathizer of the founder of Liberation Theology, but became the greatest opponent of the Synodal way in Germany. But it is not really a surprise, as Gadecki is a good son of Blessed Cardinal Wyszynski who was hated by the pre-WWII Polish government and later the German Nazis for being a tough defender of workers' rights as a priest-professor, but was considered as a tough conservative by the Vatican, though he never lost his pro-worker pedigree (as seen by his support of Solidarity).
I will always be grateful to Archbishop Gadecki for leading the Polish bishops to do what almost no one else did in the Western Church: he refused to shut down the Churches in Poland during COVID. He started it when the local Poznan government ordered the closures. In a sharp rebuke of the government, Gadecki stated he had ordered his priests to celebrate more Masses, both because more prayers were needed during the pandemic and because he did not want the limits on church attendance to prevent anyone from attending Mass at least once a week. Polish Catholics were not deprived of any Sacraments during COVID. I think his leadership is equal to that of Wyszynski and Wojtyla, because he showed that the Church must always resist governmental and societal threats to its functioning in serving the people of God.
Strangely enough, Gadecki when elected Vice President and President of the Polish Bishops Conference was considered a liberal (though in Poland that really means moderately conservative), having been known mostly for his ecumenical work with the Jewish community. That he became such a staunch warrior for orthodoxy reminds me of Cardinal Mueller, who was friends and sympathizer of the founder of Liberation Theology, but became the greatest opponent of the Synodal way in Germany. But it is not really a surprise, as Gadecki is a good son of Blessed Cardinal Wyszynski who was hated by the pre-WWII Polish government and later the German Nazis for being a tough defender of workers' rights as a priest-professor, but was considered as a tough conservative by the Vatican, though he never lost his pro-worker pedigree (as seen by his support of Solidarity).