CNA Staff, Dec 28, 2020 / 08:00 am
Relics of Auschwitz martyr St. Maximilian Kolbe were installed in a chapel in Poland's parliament before Christmas.
The relics were transferred Dec. 17 to the Mother of God, Mother of the Church chapel, which also contains relics of the Polish pope St. John Paul II and the Italian pediatrician St. Gianna Beretta Molla.
The relics were introduced formally to both houses of the Polish parliament -- the Sejm, or lower house, and the Senate -- in the capital, Warsaw, at a ceremony attended by Elżbieta Witek, the Speaker of the Sejm, Senator Jerzy Chróścikowski, and Fr. Piotr Burgoński, chaplain of the Sejm chapel.
The relics were handed over by Fr. Grzegorz Bartosik, Minister Provincial of the Conventual Franciscans in Poland, Fr. Mariusz Słowik, guardian of Niepokalanów monastery, founded by Kolbe in 1927, and Fr. Damian Kaczmarek, the treasurer of the Conventual Franciscans' Province of the Immaculate Mother of God in Poland.