Head of Polish Bishops: Pope Francis Listened to Us

Despite some reports expecting Pope Francis to criticize Polish bishops on their approach to immigration and other issues at tonight’s meeting in Krakow, the atmosphere was “very warm” and the Pope listened to their concerns, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference has said.

One of those concerns relates to ambiguous passages in his post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia and the need for their clarification — a matter that the bishops raised with the Pope, according to sources.

Speaking to reporters at the end of the Pope’s first day in Poland, Archbishop Stanislaw Gadecki said the issue of migrants and refugees was one of four raised in the closed-door question and answer encounter with the Polish episcopate in Krakow cathedral this evening.

The three other main questions concerned the Polish response to secularization and de-Christianization in Western Europe, applying mercy in today’s world, and the role of Catholic movements and associations in parish life.

The Pope, Archbishop Gadecki said, instructed the bishops to “exercise sound reasoning” and Gospel values when it comes to migrants. “That was more or less the main framework of the meeting with the Holy Father,” he said, adding that the Pope distinguished between migrants searching for work, and refugees fleeing war.

Asked whether the bishops and the Pope discussed Amoris Laetitia, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference said that as far as he and his fellow bishops were concerned, the document took into account their “more conservative proposal” during the synod which was to “retain the truth of the Gospel” when relating to admission to the sacraments of remarried divorcees. “We cannot deliberately overstep Christ’s precept against divorce,” he said.

He said the Pope believes “that general laws are very hard to enforce in each country, and so he speaks about decentralization.” He noted that......

Archbishop Gadecki’s welcoming remarks for the pope and the accompanying biography of more than 1000 years of the Catholic faith of Poland, rings out as catechesis. His words for the pope strike the heart with their joy of obedience to the faith.

Pope Francis needed such catechesis and to be, for once, surrounded by holy men.

Is it me or is the Polish bishop conference's references to AL seem less stern than previously reported? It seemed that previous reports made it seem like the Polish Church was up in arms.

Asked whether the bishops and the Pope discussed Amoris Laetitia, the president of the Polish bishops’ conference said that as far as he and his fellow bishops were concerned, the document took into account their “more conservative proposal” during the synod which was to “retain the truth of the Gospel” when relating to admission to the sacraments of remarried divorcees. “We cannot deliberately overstep Christ’s precept against divorce,” he said.

He said the Pope believes “that general laws are very hard to enforce in each country, and so he speaks about decentralization.” He noted that bishops’ conferences “might on their own initiative not only interpret papal encyclicals, but also looking at their own cultural situation, might approach some specific issues in an appropriate manner.”

The archbishop said he himself recognized the need for “constant discernment” for remarried divorcees, but added that there could be a “theological clash” over the “need for faith and receiving the sacraments.” Communion for remarried divorcees is “not something solved in the confessional in two minutes or two years,” he stated. “This is a path priests and laity need to walk together, knowing that if a marriage has been validly concluded, there are no grounds of giving Holy Communion if the person is divorced and remarried.”

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