Posted on 05/19/2006 9:41:36 AM PDT by lizol
Polish hilltop shrine centuries old center of devotion to Passion, Mary
By Jonathan Luxmoore 5/17/2006 Catholic News Service (www.catholicnews.com)
WARSAW, Poland – The hilltop Marian shrine of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska has been a center of devotion to the Passion and to Mary for four centuries.
When Pope John Paul II prayed at the shrine in 2002 during his last homecoming, he said he had found strength at Kalwaria Zebrzydowska and counted on Polish Catholics to continue coming to the shrine "to ask Mary to obtain for us unity of faith, unity of mind and spirit, unity in families and unity in society."
Pope Benedict XVI is scheduled to make a brief stop at the shrine May 27 on his way from Wadowice, Pope John Paul's birthplace, to the Divine Mercy center in the Krakow suburb of Lagiewniki.
The sanctuary's 40 historic chapels stretch over a wide area between the Zar and Lanckorona hills, where the pilgrim routes are marked with New Testament names from Herod's palace to the Mount of Olives.
The Marian shrine's history began in 1600, when the governor of Krakow, Mikolaj Zebrzydowski, built a Golgotha chapel on Zar hill modeled after Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulcher. He entrusted it to the Franciscans.
In 1609, a baroque basilica was built and dedicated to Our Lady of the Angels.
Over the next eight years, Zebrzydowski constructed a series of stations marking Christ's passion, from the upper room to the tomb. Later, he added a network of chapels that commemorate events in the life of Mary.
The work was continued by his son, Jan Zebrzydowski, who built 13 more chapels, and the basilica and monastery were expanded by a later patron, Magdalena Czartoryska.
In May 1641, shortly before Jan Zebrzydowski's death, a painting of the "Madonna and Child" was entrusted to the Franciscans by a neighboring landowner, Stanislaw Paszkowski, after it allegedly wept tears of blood in his private chapel.
The resulting Marian cult was recognized by Auxiliary Bishop Tomasz Oborski of Krakow in 1658, and, nine years later the painting got its own chapel. The image was symbolically crowned in 1887.
Kalwaria Zebrzydowska's twin Way of the Cross and Way of Compassion of God's Mother attracted pilgrims from all over Eastern Europe and Germany.
The shrine was used as an Austrian field hospital during World War I and as a base first for the occupying Germans and later for Poland's underground army during World War II.
Although part of its land was confiscated by Poland's postwar communist rulers, the regime permitted the seminary from communist Ukraine's Lviv Archdiocese to be relocated here. The regime also allowed it to be renovated and rebuilt.
In the 1980s, the land was returned and a separate friars seminary was allowed to open.
Today, the shrine is one of Poland's largest pilgrimage centers, with tens of thousands regularly attending services during Holy Week and on the feast of the Assumption. It is on the UNESCO World Heritage List.
The shrine is also an important pastoral center for the Krakow Archdiocese. Its pilgrimages have a tradition of lay leadership, which was described by Pope John Paul during his first visit in June 1979 as a "special prototype for the apostolate of the laity."
For Polish Catholics, the sanctuary is intimately linked with Pope John Paul, for whom a Mass in the shrine has been celebrated every day since 1979.
The then-Karol Wojtyla first visited Kalwaria Zebrzydowska as a young boy with his father, who apparently pointed to the Madonna image after the death of Emilia Wojtyla and told him, "From now on, this will be your mother."
He later traveled to the shrine as a priest, bishop and cardinal, initiating separate male and female pilgrimages which are now joint annual family pilgrimages.
In August 2002, during a visit marking the sanctuary's 400th anniversary, Pope John Paul thanked Polish Catholics for their spiritual support and asked them to continue praying for him "as long as I am alive and after my death."
Pope Benedict visited the shrine in October 1988, as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, and is expected to be greeted by 20,000 when he prays at the basilica May 27.
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