photo - PAP

Police say around 1000 people demonstrated in Warsaw, Sunday, calling for a GM crops ban, the continued ban on same sex unions, an end to Sunday trading: and for Jesus to be made King of Poland.

The mostly elderly demonstrators, some wearing long red gowns with a white cross emblazoned on the front, were from the Movement for the Sovereignty of Poland, a group which previously made headlines when they protested against the singer Madonna’s concert in Warsaw last year.

Chanting “woe betide those who forbid Jesus to be King of Poland” the protesters  - which they say reached around 3,000 in number - marched from the Parliament building through the central streets of Warsaw, passing the Presidential Palace to say mass at St John’s.

A statement by the movement says: “The only hope for a change to the current situation in our homeland - and to be released from the hands of numerous enemies who constantly want to destroy it - and a renewal of the moral and religious life of the nation, is to enthrone Jesus Christ as King of Poland.”

The demand has historical precedent, say the protestors. The Virgin Mary was declared honorary queen of Poland by King Jan Kazimierz, over 350 years ago.

In 2006, 46 MPs from the Law and Justice party and the League of Polish Families submitted a motion in the Lower House of Parliament to make Jesus Poland’s king.

Although demanding that Jesus should be sovereign of Poland was the main aim of the march, the Movement for the Sovereignty of Poland also warned of the weakness of the Polish armed forces and of the dangers of the Lisbon Treaty.

On the march was 79 year-old far-right activist Kazimierz Switon, who attracted international media attention when he was arrested in 1999 for possession of explosives during his protest against crosses being removed from outside the Auschwitz death camp museum site, placed their to commemorate a visit by John Paul II.  

Referring to the Smolensk cross, which had been removed from in front of the President’s residence last Thursday and placed in the Presidential Chapel, Switon said on Sunday: “The palace should be closed to President Komorowski and made into a museum for the Kaczynski brothers.”

President Lech Kaczynski died in the April 10 air disaster in western Russia.  (pg)