JASNA GÓRA IS PRAYING FOR THE CASUALTIES OF THE SMOLEŃSK CATASTROPHE
The celebrations of the 3rd anniversary of the Smoleńsk catastrophe took place at Jasna Góra on 7 and 10 April this year. On 7 April relatives of the catastrophe casualties were present, and among them: Ewa Kochanowska, Zuzanna Kurtyka and Dorota Skrzypek with their families. The Holy Mass was presided over by Father Dariusz Cichor, the general Definitor of the Pauline’s Order. He encouraged the participants to keep ‘this heritage, which has been left by them on this land in their hearts and attitudes, apart from the memory about the casualties’. – Our memory and prayer are also a care about whether get to know the truth about this event from before 3 years, because the future form of our Homeland depends on it – emphasized Fr. Cichor. The casualties’ families gave mementos of their relatives, as a votive for Our Lady of Jasna Góra. After the Holy Mass in the Jasna Góra basilica there was a concert ’Prayer and Memory’. The introductory word was addressed to the attendants by Zuzanna Kurtyka. The Holy Mass, in the intention for the late president of the Polish Republic, Lech Kaczyński, his spouse and all the dead in Smoleńsk on the day of the 3rd anniversary of the Smoleńsk catastrophe, on 10 April this year, was presided over by the Metropolitan of Częstochowa archbishop Wacław Depo, in front of the Miraculous Image of Our Lady. The Archbishop emphasized in the homily that faith in Christ ‘tells us to stand at the altar of Homeland, in order to register another date, a station of prayer for the victims of Katyń of April 1940, as well as the casualties of Smoleńsk of 10 April 2010’. – The victims of Katyń were to be forgotten by the world or never mentioned. The casualties’ families were deprived of the right for the truth, the right for the public grief, for expressing their grief and reminiscing their relatives with dignity for many years. Archbishop Depo reminded that – as the president of the Polish Republic prof. Lech Kaczyński was to say in the planned pronouncement in Katyń on 10 April 2010 - ‘land covered the signs of the crime, and a lie was intended to remove it from the human memory’. He was to state later that ‘concealing the truth about Katyń became one of the fundamental truths of communists’ policy in post-war Poland, a founding lie of the Polish People’s Republic’.
– Today we are again supposed to demand the truth in Europe, which brings us a newspeak. Let’s take an example of replacing the word ‘cross’ in the documents of the European Tribunal with the formulation ‘a strong outer sign’, and ‘Christian religion’ with – ‘religion of the majority in Europe’.
So, we see and hear that what should be built on the truth, changes into an ideology supplanting religion and national identity, pushing it into the sphere of subculture – said archbishop Depo.
After the Holy Mass the believers went to the Smoleńsk epitaph at Jasna Góra in order to pay a tribute to the casualties. There was an Appeal prayer for the dead and grave candles were lit.
(AA)
"Niedziela" 16/2013