Poland remembers Pope John Paul II on the fourth anniversary of his death; more and more Poles treat the confessional as the psychotherapist's couch; swelling ranks of Poland's rich list and surprising rise in car sales.
Press reviewed by Krystyna Kolosowska
Tygodnik Powszechny pays tribute to the memory of Pope John Paul II with several articles and an interview with the late pontiff’s close friend and assistant. Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz says he still senses the pope’s presence, as do many other people. People used to write letters to John Paul II, asking him for help with prayer, and they did receive it. This is continuing to this day, the cardinal tells Tygodnik Powszechny.
April 2 will remain a special day for several generations of Poles, writes Gazeta Polska. The sense of community, common roots and solidarity cannot be wiped out from our history and especially from our thoughts. Are the Poles truly devoted to the Pope – the answer will be known only in a few years from now. But it is clear now: the evidence of such faith and devotion will not be gestures or tears but commitment to the cause of life, the family and Christianity.
Solidarnosc, a weekly of the Solidarity trade union, writes about the privatization, or rather liquidation, as it calls it, of two of Poland’s three biggest shipyards. It recalls in this connection what Pope John Paul II said in the 1990s, when Poland embraced free market economy. He warned against the impoverishment of the society and against the emergence of a small group of wealthy people alongside a big group of people who have little or next to nothing.
Newsweek suggests that Polish Catholics are beginning to treat confession as a form of therapy. Instead of atonement, they expect understanding, help and support from their priests. The confessional is becoming something like the psychoanalyst’s couch. This change in attitude is a major challenge for priests, who have to be prepared to deal with more and more unusual sins. For example: the race for money which results in neglect of the family. People want to talk about business and mass layoffs, also road rage and problems of shopaholics. On the other hand – there are issues, which some people deliberately fail to mention in the confessional. For example, young couples to be married sometimes do not admit that they engage in premarital sex. This is a reflection of the fact that over 60 percent of Poles do not regard it as a sin. Speaking about figures, 56 percent of Poles go to confession several times a year, 11 percent once a year.
‘For my Poles nothing is impossible,’ Napoleon Bonaparte used to say. Wprost claims that the opinion, which the French emperor expressed two centuries ago, is still valid. The best proof are biographies of people of Polish extraction, who won top posts in the army and administration in the United States and in Europe. The weekly mentions general James Kowalski, whose grandparents came to the United States from Poland and who now heads the American Air Force Global Strike Command. A brilliant career in the American army was made by general Edward Rowny, who was one of the main advisers of President Ronald Reagan. After martial law was introduced in Poland in 1981, general Rowny, as Reagan’s emissary, met with Pope John Paul II as well as opposition leaders Lech Walesa in Poland and Vaclav Havel in Czechoslovakia. The weekly mentions also David Miliband, foreign minister in the cabinet of Gordon Brown, regarded as one of the most promising young politicians in Britain, and Axel Poniatowski, member of the French National Assembly.
As the global financial crisis seeps into Poland, wealthy customers have become an increasingly attractive target for banks, writes the English-language Warsaw Business Journal. Private banking is a relative new kid on the block in the Polish market. In the near term, the economic slowdown has cast its shadow over the segment, but bankers say Poland is a relatively untapped market, with a pool of wealthy potential clients who have not previously taken advantage of such services. The ranks of Poland’s rich list have been steadily swelling over the past few years. Money.pl reports that there were 12,428 people in Poland with incomes exceeding 1 million zloty annually in 2007, citing the latest available data collected by the regional revenue chambers. This represents roughly 4,000 more zloty millionaires than in 2006.
Car sales are falling in Europe. Governments are announcing rescue plans. In Poland, the imports of used cars are declining but the sales of new ones are on the rise, without any incentives offered by the government, writes Polityka. Have we become immune to the crisis – the weekly wonders, reporting that new car sales last February were 7.2 percent up on the same period of 2008 and 13 percent bigger than in January. That’s how it looks on the face of it, but specialists point to German government subsidies to new cars bought, which caused demand for cheap makes to soar. With insufficient supply on the German market, individual buyers and wholesale dealers started to import cars from Poland, which additionally attracts customers with low zloty exchange rate, Polityka explains.