Warsaw’s cross row

“Bring down the palace, it obscures the view of the cross!” and “Move the cross to church, Poland is a secular country!”, these slogans could be seen during a happening against the cross in front of the presidential palace in Warsaw last night, Gazeta Wyborczareports on the front page. The cross was placed before the palace after the air crash near Smoleńsk on April 10, in which 96 top Polish officials were killed, including president Lech Kaczyński. On 3 August a group of defenders of the cross blocked its transfer to a nearby church in violation of earlier arrangements with the Church hierarchy. This prompted Dominik Taras, a cook at the Warsaw Fine Arts Academy, to organize a protest on Facebook that brought several thousand people before the palace last night to appeal for the cross’s removal. “Yielding to the defenders of the cross, the State approved what is happening here. We also want to have our share in making fun of the situation”, he told the daily.