Warsaw, January 29, 2021
Photo: squarespace.com The trial of three Polish women charged with offending religious beliefs by profaning the highly-revered Mother of God of Częstochowa Icon began on Wednesday, January 13.
Elżbieta Podleśna, Anna Prus, and Joanna Gzyra-Iskandar Podleśna face up to two years in prison for an incident in April 2019 when the trio put up posters of the “Black Madonna” icon in the city of Płock, 70 miles northwest of Warsaw, with the Lord and the Mother of God’s traditional golden halos replaced with LGBT rainbow halos, reports Politico.
The provocation was meant as a protest against a traditional Easter display that listed LGBT among the sins to be battled against, along with greed, hate, envy, and others.
The current Polish government has been especially strong on issues of traditional morals. In June, President Andrzej Duda vowed to ban LGBT teaching in schools, saying LGBT ideology is worse than communism. Two days ago, the government implemented an earlier decision of the constitutional court that bans 98% of all abortions in the nation.
Elżbieta Podleśna claimed the Church display was “homophobic,” but claimed while she herself is “religious,” she sees “nothing untoward about the protest using Mary.” Prus said the images had already been printed as part of a protest against the Church for “attacking” LGBT people while failing to deal with its own pedophilia scandals.
Podleśna was arrested in 2019, which was praised by the ruling Law and Justice Party, but decried by liberals throughout the country. “No tall tales of freedom and ‘tolerance’ give ANYONE the right to offend the feelings of the faithful,” tweeted then-Interior Minister Joachim Brudziński, now a member of European Parliament.
The three were then charged in July 2020. The trial was set to begin in November, but was then delayed until this month.
The priest of the church in Płock and a religious activist testified at the first trial hearing on January 13, while a small group of protestors shouted slogans like, “Secular, not Catholic Poland!” The case was then adjourned until February 17.
The Black Madonna seems to be a popular target for leftist activists. In June of last year, Black Lives Matter activists defaced a copy of the icon in a shrine in the Dutch town of Breda that is, ironically, dedicated to the city’s 1944 liberation from German nazis at the hands of the Polish 1st Armored Division.
Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Vkontakte, Telegram, WhatsApp, Parler, MeWe, and Gab!
