Over 10 thousand motorbike riders gathered on the esplanade in front of the Marian Sanctuary of Jasna Góra (Częstochowa) yesterday, to attend a Sunday liturgy celebrated on Mercy Sunday to coincide with the pilgrimage of remembrance for the Poles who lived in the area of today’s Ukraine but who belonged to Poland until 1939. In his homily, the celebrant, Father Waldemar Cisło, director of the Polish section of the Aiuto alla Chiesa che soffre Foundation, pointed out that “once again we are witnesses of the situation in which people and centres of powers want to persuade us that, if we drove God out of man’s heart, of our schools, of our families, of our places of work or study, we could achieve a longed-for happiness”.

The prelate encouraged them to reflect on the “reasons why, in the modern world, Christianity is viewed by many as an enemy of human rights” and made the example of the Churches that have been closed in some European countries as if “the Sars-CoV-2 virus were infectious only in places of worship, and not in subways or shopping malls”. In addition, father Cisło thanked the people there for their example, since “brave Christians”, who can make the Church, “not turn into a Church of silence and only of sacristy will be more and more needed”. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, over 2.5 million people have been infected with Covid in Poland, and nearly 60 thousand of them died.