cardinal Glemp: photo - P Goławski/PR (arch)
The cardinal, who led Poland’s Roman Catholic Church as Polish Primate from 1981, the year martial law was declared by the communists, to 2009, following Poland’s transition to a democratic state.
Cardinal Glemp will be buried in the crypt of St John the Baptist’s Cathedral in Warsaw, the place of burial of many prominent Poles, church leaders, politicians and writers.
Cardinal Kazimierz Nycz, the Metropolitan of Warsaw, has announced that the farewell ceremonies will begin on Saturday.
The coffin with the cardinal’s body will be lying in state at the Church of the Nuns of the Visitation starting at 11 am, local time.
On Sunday, a mass will be celebrated at the Holy Cross Church, from where, in the late afternoon hours, his coffin will be carried in a procession to the Cathedral, for Monday’s main ceremonies.
President Bronislaw Komorowski - who visited Cardinal Glemp in hospital, where he was suffering from lung cancer, several days before his death – will attend the funeral as well as many cardinals and bishops, from the Vatican and other countries.
The Polish flag at the Presidential Palace is flying at half-mast, Thursday, as a sign of mourning.
President Bronislaw Komorowski received the news of the Cardinal’s death with great sorrow and said the lowering of flags to half-mast was a fitting tribute to a great religious leader.
"I think that this symbolic gesture of mourning is the most appropriate form to remember the role Primeate Glemp played during this interesting period in the life of the nation,” President Komorowski said, Thursday morning.
US Ambassador in Warsaw Stephan Mull wrote on Twitter: “May he rest in peace. He took Poland through the historic times in a fantastic way”.
Poland’s first prime minister after the fall of communism, Tadeusz Mazowiecki has said “I held Cardinal Glemp in high esteem. People kept on comparing him to his predecessor [Primate Stefan Wyszyński, who was known as Primate of the Millenium for his work in opposing the attemtped suppression of the Roman Catholic Church during the communist era] but he was not bothered about that, and had his own views.
“It was thanks to him that representatives of the Church hierarchy participated in the Round Table talks in 1989 [which paved the day for the June 1989 parliamentary elections],” Mazowiecki said. (mk/pg)
source: PAP/IAR