PiS president says only his party can defend the authority of the Church and Saint John Paul II
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, has said that only his party can defend the authority of the Catholic Church and the late Pope John-Paul II, saying Christianity is the only moral order in Poland.
Socially conservative, PiS has long sought to represent and promote Catholic values. It has also maintained strong ties to the Catholic Church; a stance that has drawn criticism from Poland’s more liberal parties, which accuse of it blurring the lines between church and state.
"In Poland, no other moral order, apart from the Christian one, is actually known at all," said Kaczynski at a PiS convention in Lodz, adding that the alternative was nihilism.
"It is against this background, we must view the attacks on the Church, and this year also the attacks on John Paul II," he continued. "These attacks were part of an attack on this order, a very consistent programme of undermining it, destroying it," he said.
He claimed that St. John Paul II, who was born Karol Wojtyla, became the highest authority of a reborn and free Poland.
"They want to destroy it. And they will destroy it. And only we are able to defend this authority. Oppose it. Reject it," he said, in an apparent reference to allegations that the late pope turned a blind eye to sex abuse allegations by priests under his care.
He admitted that bad things were also happening in the Church. "And we need to talk about this, and we also need to fight against it, although it is primarily the task of the Church. In Poland, however, the Church is the foundation of this entire invisible order that I was talking about," Kaczynski said. (PAP)
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