Poland’s love for Mary made her the bulwark of Catholicism

In Poland, a country with a strong Catholic identity dating back to around 1000 AD, expressions of Marian devotion have assumed an intensity and cordiality we rarely see in other countries.

The Mother of God is an integral part of public, social and family life. A farmer or a construction worker will pause and pray before starting their work, to ask God for a blessing through the intercession of the Virgin Mary, because without God that very work would not have been possible.

The first church built in Poland was dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, and this devotion, spread by the Cistercian order, has always been important there. A group of Pauline monks sent by Luigi d'Angiò, then King of Hungary and Poland, at the end of the 14th century, started the construction of the Jasna Gora Monastery, near Czestochowa.

Catholicism experienced a strong renewal in Poland in the mid-16^th century, marked everywhere else by the spread of the Protestant Reformation, thanks to the work of the Jesuits and a strong popular devotion to Mary. From the moment that Poland, who was surrounded by pagan populations, realized that she was the bulwark of Catholicism, she proclaimed Mary "Queen of Poland” in 1656.

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