Polish police evict nuns from convent

MARCIN ZOLTOWSKI
The Associated Press
October 10, 2007 at 12:59 PM EDT

KAZIMIERZ DOLNY, Poland — Police pushed their way into a Polish convent Wednesday and evicted about 65 rebellious nuns – arresting the mother superior and a monk who had occupied the complex with them illegally for two years.

The women took over the building in a rebellion against the Vatican, which had ordered the replacement of their mother superior, Jadwiga Ligocka.

“They were disobedient,” said Mieczyslaw Puzewicz, a spokesman for the Lublin diocese of the Roman Catholic Church. The Vatican formally expelled the women from their Sisters of Bethany order last year.

Police arrested Mother Jadwiga and a former Franciscan friar, Roman Komaryczko, who had been living with the nuns, and planned to question them, police spokesman Mariusz Sokolowski said.

Police escort nuns to a bus in Kazimierz Dolny, Poland, on Wednesday after pushing their way into a convent in eastern Poland to evict about 65 rebellious nuns and a monk who have occupied the complex illegally for two years. (Czarek Sokolowski/The Associated Press)
The Globe and Mail

He would not specify the charges against them.

A locksmith had opened the gate to the walled convent in the eastern Polish town of Kazimierz Dolny and police in riot gear pushed forward, encountering an onslaught of verbal aggression from some of the former nuns, Mr.Sokolowski said.

Several hours into the operation, the women, in black habits and each escorted by two policewomen, began filing out of the building.

Some carried musical instruments – guitars, a tambourine, a drum – while others bore simple backpacks or carried large blue garbage bags apparently packed their with belongings.

The nuns walked calmly out of the convent through a tree-dotted courtyard and onto one of three buses, the last of which finally pulled away more than 6½ hours after the operation began.

Among the nuns were five Russians and a Belarusian living in Poland illegally, Mr. Sokolowski said. They most likely will be deported, he added.

Mr. Puzewicz, who was at the convent, said the nuns were acting “as if they are being manipulated” psychologically.

He did not say who he thought was manipulating them, but he did say that the former friar, Mr. Komaryczko, had had a “negative influence” on Mother Jadwiga.

When the Vatican formally expelled the nuns in 2006, they refused to leave the building, cutting themselves off from the outside world.

The church eventually sought legal action to remove them, and a court in nearby Pulawy ordered the eviction – a step they had previously resisted. The convent’s electricity was cut off earlier this year, but local residents sympathized with the plight of the nuns and secretly funnelled food to them.

The Polish have described Mother Jadwiga as a charismatic figure who says she has had religious visions and who was attempting to transform the convent into a contemplative order.

The Lublin diocese hinted at that in a statement on its website, which said that “Mother Jadwiga’s private revelations and the fact that she made it a guideline to stick by them caused unease to the congregation.”

Source: The Globe and Mail