“Today’s world tries to undermine our foundations, puts them to the test, reverses concept and erects false idols. It draws on the bad pages of history. However, all those who think that we allow ourselves to be manipulated are sorely mistaken. For us Poles, John Paul II unites and binds us together. He is that essential link, the light of freedom. Whoever tries to extinguish this fire will be met with a clear and firm ‘no’,” said Sejm Speaker Elżbieta Witek in a tv address on Thursday 9 March 2023.

The Sejm Speaker pointed out that, regardless of one’s faith and beliefs, there are “common insignia of identity”. “It is our white eagle, the white and red flag, the icon of Our Lady of Częstochowa and the portrait of John Paul II. In the most difficult times, those symbols kept us alive, kept us together, gave us hope for a free, independent Poland. Today, based on fabricated communist denunciations, they want to take one of these symbols away from us, believing that this will divide us”, said Speaker Witek.

„The Security Service tried to destroy Karol Wojtyła. The KGB tried to kill him. It failed then and it will not succeed today. John Paul II is our identity, our foundation and our bond. The communists knew it perfectly well, that is why they were destroying him so much during his lifetime”, recalled Elżbieta Witek.

The Speaker of the Sejm also mentioned a special resolution passed by the Sejm on Thursday ‘as a gesture against the shameful attempts to deface St John Paul II’. 

“I thank wholeheartedly those parliamentarians who voted for it. They thus stood on the side of good. Let us not allow ourselves to be divided. Long live Poland and the memory of the great Pole, the hero of our freedom, Saint John Paul II”, concluded Witek.

Adrian Andrzejewski