Poland displays among the highest rates of church engagement of any country in Central and Eastern Europe. Some 87 percent of Poles identify as Catholic and 45 percent say they attend church at least weekly, according to the Pew Research Center’s 2017 study, “Religious Belief and National Belonging in Central and Eastern Europe” [https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2017/05/10/ religious-belief-and-national-belonging-incentral-and-eastern-europe]
The south and east of Poland are particularly devout. Traveling through the country’s southeasternmost province one Sunday in late 2018, the editor of the EastWest Church Report observed village church after village church overflowing with Massgoers of all ages. Entering at random some of downtown Kraków’s scores of churches one August weekend in 2022, the editor found at least 40 worshippers within each attending up to a dozen Masses available daily. Notably, almost all family members at a baptism and wedding could recite key prayers by heart.
Albeit down from 96 percent in 1991, the 2017 Pew study also reported a nine-point decline in the number of Poles identifying as Catholic, however. Poland’s Institute for Catholic Church Statistics [Polish: Instytut Statystyki Kościoła Katolickiego] has since observed a further drop, with 37 percent of Catholics recorded attending Sunday Mass in 2019, and—perhaps exacerbated by COVID-19 pandemic restrictions—28 percent in 2021 [https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/how-steep-is-polands-drop-in-massattendance]
.Adherence to the Catholic Church also appears to be declining more rapidly among younger generations. The Church in Poland, a 2021 report by the Catholic Information Agency [Katolicka Agencja Special Issue: Catholic Poland Today Informacyjna], found that the level of religious practice among young Poles had halved over the previous 30 years [https://ekai.pl/wpcontent/uploads/2021/03/Raport-Kosciolw-Polsce-2021.pdf].
Socially liberal attitudes are also gaining traction. According to the 2017 Pew study, 48 percent of Poles view homosexual behavior as morally wrong—among the lowest rate of any country in the region. When an October 2020 constitutional court ruling limited legal abortion to cases of rape, incest, or endangerment to a woman’s life or health, more than 100,000 marched against the restrictions [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-polandabortion-idCAKBN27F13O].
This shift in Polish social attitudes is reflected geographically in electoral preferences for the socially conservative Law and Justice [Prawo i Sprawiedliwość] Party—in power since 2015—in the south and east. By contrast, the more liberal Civil Platform [Platforma Obywatelska]—chaired by former European Council president Donald Tusk—fares better in the north and west, especially among younger and urban voters [https://www.ft.com/content/1fa0c837-7cbe-4188-aff5-7a9e4a1b28b6].
In recent years Poles have also begun to question the Catholic Church’s previously flawless reputation as a bastion of truth and justice instrumental to the fall of Communism in 1989. The 2019 documentary Tell No One [Tylko nie mów nikomu] shocked millions with examples of child abuse perpetrated by Polish Catholic priests from the late Communist period onwards, as well as the ecclesiastical authorities’ woefully inadequate response [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrUvQ3W3nV4].
In March 2023 researchers alleged that Pope John Paul II had covered up several cases of such abuse while Archbishop of Kraków in the 1970s. The following month 60,000 took to the streets of Warsaw in defense of the late Polish pope and now saint. Some Catholic intellectuals have also cautioned that the allegations give unwarranted credence to their key sources: documents compiled by the Communist secret police [the SB or Służba Bezpieczeństwa] [https://catholicherald.co.uk/john-paul-iihandling-of-abuse-claims-was-the-oppositeto-what-his-attackers-want-us-to-think/].
In this issue of the East-West Church Report, Polish Catholics interviewed by the editor in Warsaw and Kraków in August 2022 offer a range of perspectives.
