Poland’s Catholic Treasures
From Good Shepherd Tours, welcome back! We once again prepare to take a virtual pilgrimage through a new set of travel blogs across Europe, North America and the Middle East. We continue our journey with the final installment of a three-part series on Poland. View the first blog if you missed both, or view the second one is you missed it.
Now that we have visited the birthplace of Christianity in Poland (Poznan and Gniezo) as well as its Heartbeat (Czestochowa), so before we move on to another country, let us take a moment to look at some of the other sacred places of pilgrimage in Poland.
While the city of Warsaw, the capital of Poland, is better known for its modernity and cultural life, St. John’s Archcathedral in the Old Town district is a definite stop on the jaunt through the historic core of the city. Dating from the 14th century, the cathedral was painstakingly rebuilt after the devastation of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising in adherence to its original Gothic style and is now a UNESCO World Heritage site. Dozens of other churches around the city, ranging from the twin-spired Cathedral of St. Florin to the rotund Romanesque St. Alexander.
In the city of Krakow, the beautiful Wawel Cathedral, dedicated to Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus, is considered a national shrine due to it being an important coronation site for the royalty of Poland, its reliquary of Saint Stanislaus, the crypt of King Sigismund as well as many other Polish nobility and dignitaries, and its astounding Renaissance architecture. It is here that the future Pope St. John Paul II gave his first mass after his consecration to the priesthood in 1946. A host of other basilicas, cathedrals and churches, ranging from the Gothic St. Mary’s Basilica in the Market Square of this beautiful city to the exceedingly modernist Divine Mercy Sanctuary which houses the relics of Saint Faustina give a hint of the range of church architecture and sacred treasures that lay in the city.
Not far outside the city of Krakow lies a truly unique place: the Wieliczka Salt Mine, 327 meters in depth, once one of the oldest and largest salt mines in Europe, and now a major tourist attraction. Visitors can experience the other-worldness of the subterranean chambers which are now given to artistic sculptures made of rock salt, and also visit the multiple chapels dedicated to St. Barbara, patroness of miners, St. Kinga and other underground sacred spaces, admiring the unique carvings and features.
The historic Baltic Sea port city of Gdansk has plenty of history and culture to view, not least of all the massive Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, one of the three largest brick structures in the world. Once simultaneously used as a Lutheran and Roman Catholic place of worship, it serves as a symbol of the city’s diverse, historic past and prominence in Polish commerce, as evidenced by its ornate organ, a 15th-century astronomical clock, and several important pieces of religious art, some of which are now preserved in museums.
The small town of Wadowice may seem like an unlikely place to visit in a country full of cities brimming with fantastic historical structures and magnificent places of worship until one recalls that it was here that Pope St. John Paul II, born Karol Josef Wojtyla, was born. A museum of his childhood home is now preserved as both a Polish national shrine and a place of pilgrimage.
There are plenty more places of pilgrimage to visit in Poland, and perhaps we will return to visit some of these locations in greater detail in the future, as well as to explore more. But what is most important to remember is that Poland is a country of living faith that is expressed in different ways and places, from busy urban centers to quiet country villages. So now, let us leave Poland for the moment and venture east...
Be Not Afraid!
Good Shepherd Travel offers trips to Jaffa as part of their Holy Land tours. Rome, Lourdes, Fatima, Ireland, and many other destinations are among our most popular programs. For more information on how to begin preparing for a pilgrimage in late 2021 and 2022, contact Tony AbuAita at Tony@goodshepherdtravel.com. We will return to pilgrimage – and we hope to see you with us!