The cross becomes a political issue. photo: thenews.pl

Several thousand people gathered outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw, Monday night, after a social network campaign threatened to take the disputed Smolensk cross to a church, or, “to the police as evidence of a crime”.

Police spokesman Maciej Karczyński said that the midnight demonstration to move the Smolensk memorial cross to a nearby church - erected outside the presidential residence by scouts in the wake of the April 10 air crash which killed President Lech Kaczynski - passed off peacefully, however.

"We want to move the cross from the Presidential Palace to the church, which is a more proper place for it,” said Dominik Taras from the Action Cross social network campaign before the demonstration.

“We will defend the cross passively with silent prayer,” said Mariusz Bulski from the Defenders of the Cross, a movement backed by the opposition Law and Justice party, lead by the late president Lech Kaczynski’s twin brother Jaroslaw.

“Poland is a secular country, respect the constitution,” said one banner in carried by protestors in favour of moving the cross, separated by a police cordon from a smaller group of counter-demonstrators.

The conflict over the cross outside the Presidential Palace became sharper last week after a group of protestors in favour of keeping it where it is - and after some pushing and shoving with police - managed to postpone the move to St Anne’s church down the road.

President Bronislaw Komorowski and the Civic Platform-led government - and the Roman Catholic church establishment - favour moving the cross to St Anne’s church, a short walk from the Presidential Palace.

Protestors, and a few hundred from the Defenders of the Cross, began to drift away around half an hour after midnight. The cross, the hottest political issue in Poland during this stormy summer, was still there. (pg)