"Defenders of the Cross" pray by the new 2.5 metre cross outside the Presidential Palace. Photo: PAP/Pawel SupernakA two-and-a-half-metre cross made by a Polish folk artist has been placed outside the Presidential Palace in Warsaw.
The cross is to remain outside the Palace until 22.30 CET, having been placed there by the “Defenders of the Cross,” a social group which vowed to protect a cross erected there by Scouts in the days following the presidential plane crash in April.
According to the “Defenders”, the aim of the happening is to make known their continuing wish to return the cross from the Palace’s chapel back to its original location outside the Presidential Palace.
Made of lime and measuring some 2.5 metres, the cross was made by a folk artist from the south-eastern Lublin region. On Monday afternoon, the cross was blessed and transported to the Presidential Palace, where the “Defenders” prayed and sang religious songs over a portable loudspeaker set.
Wlodzimierz Kaczanow, an organising member of the “Defenders of the Cross” told journalists that on 11 November, Polish independence day, the cross will be taken by motorboat up the River Vistula to the Baltic city of Gdansk.
Smaller crosses carrying slogans such as “We will pull through” and “Poland, wake up!” are to be handed out among parishioners along the route. According to Kaczanow, there are at least one hundred such parishes which have shown interest in the miniature crosses thus far.
“We want to arrive in Gdansk on 13 December, the anniversary of the imposition of Martial Law,” Kaczanow said, adding that “Gdansk was a cradle of freedom and we want to remind people that the cross helps in regaining that freedom in the fullest sense.”
The mission to transport the cross up the Vistula has been financed by private donations, by members of the “Defenders of the Cross” Social Initiative. “Neither the Church, nor [any political party has donated money for the action],” Kaczanow has stated. (jb)
Source: PAP