[avgDev]

Poland is insanely religious. I grew up in Poland and moved to US with my parents at age of 14. I became an atheist. Recently, I visited Poland, and was amazed that people my age are still mostly religious.

Recently, I read a story about people who took down a statue of a priest who molested children. There was an outcry and some politician had the statue put back in its place. That is just so twisted. Many people I talked to in Poland don't want to even discuss church and systematic protection of pedophiles. It makes them very uneasy but they want to ignore it i guess?

[ajuc]

The problem with that particular statue was procedural - they illegally took down that statue before the city council decided what to do with it as the accusations appeared. I can understand why these people did it - they can be frustrated after decades of being ignored.

The late president of Gdańsk said they will take it down, but it takes time for the procedure, and the activists took it down themselves before that. So they will probably put it back and then take it down legally. As funny as this sounds Gdańsk is very liberal for Poland.

But, generally I agree - Poland is crazy religious, and the problem with that particular priest was that he knew all the highest officials in Poland, including even presidents. He was the Solidarity priest, that participated in the protests against communism. At first it was almost a national betrayal to say anything bad about him (because he was a figure of anti-communism opposition), then after communism failed he knew presidents and prime ministers and who would act on these accusations.

So he died without being officially accused, and now it's hard to even get people to remove the statues...