The Polish Episcopal Conference has issued the following statement:
Several million Poles prayed the rosary at the same time throughout the country on October 7. This was the largest prayer event in Europe after the 2016 World Youth Day.
“The Rosary to the Borders” is the name of the prayer initiative, which took place on 7 October, the feast of Our Lady of the Rosary. On the 100th anniversary of the apparitions in Fatima, pilgrims went to the borders of Poland, where Holy Mass was celebrated simultaneously in 300 churches at 11am, with the Rosary prayed at 2pm.
Archbishop Marek Jedras-zewski of Krakow said during his sermon on the feast that people should pray for “Europe to remain Europe.
Rafal Pankowski, an expert on xenophobia and extremism, said the prayers were an expression of Islamophobia at a time of rising anti-Muslim sentiment in Poland, even though the country’s Muslim population is small.
“The whole concept of doing it on the borders reinforces the ethno religious, xenophobic model of national identity,” Pankowski, who heads the Never Again association in Warsaw, told the Associated Press.
