photo - PAP

A plaque commemorating the late Lech Kaczynski and wife Maria, the last president of Poland in exile and 11 other victims of the air crash near Smolensk who worked for the Presidential Chancellery, has been unveiled in the chapel of the Presidential Palace.

The ceremony Tuesday morning was hosted by President Bronislaw Komorowski.

It was preceded by a Holy Mass celebrated by the Archbishop of Warsaw Kazimierz Nycz and attended by the president and several members of the victims’ families. At their request, there was no media coverage of the ceremony.

Paweł Deresz, the husband of Jolanta Szymanek-Deresz, one of the victims, who served as Head of Chancellery during Aleksander Kwaśniewski’s presidency, expressed hope that today’s ceremony will calm down the tense atmosphere surrounding the cross which has stood in front of the Presidential Palace since the national mourning in April.

He added, however, that in his view the problem will not be solved until the cross is transferred into one of the Warsaw churches.

Lawyer Rafał Rogalski, who acts as the plenipotentiary for the families of a group of victims of the air crash has said that the commemorative plaque in the Presidential Palace Chapel does not solve the controversy as to how to pay tribute to the ninety six victims of the tragedy.

In Rogalski’s view, a solution has to be worked out in talks with the families of all the victims.

On Friday, four months after the presidential plane crashed near Smolensk, a plaque with the names of all the victims will be unveiled in the crypt of the Wawel Cathedral in Krakow, where the presidential couple Lech and Maria Kaczyński are interred.

The plaque, which is made of pink sandstone, will also bear the inscription in Latin ‘Corpora dormiunt, vigilant animae’, which means ‘The bodies sleep while their souls keep vigil’. (mk)

source: IAR