Hatred does not have the final word, Cardinal Ryś declares after gunman kills six in Poland

Cardinal Grzegorz Ryś, archbishop of Kraków, called on residents to stand together in prayer, inviting everyone to a Mass later held at St. Anne’s Collegiate Church, a short walk from the city’s Main Market Square, where a gunman killed six people and wounded 15 on Nov. 7.

“Our faith ensures that we are never – even in the face of the greatest challenges – helpless. Where, humanly speaking, we feel our strength failing, weakened and terrified by the audacity of evil – there our weakness calls upon the POWER of God and the hope rooted in Him, that the final word does not and cannot belong to hatred,” Ryś wrote in a letter to the faithful that day, according to a translation published by Aleteia.

The gunman drove into the square around 3 p.m. and opened fire on passersby, according to police cited by Reuters. Four women and two men died, among them a British man and an Austrian woman.

Police shot and arrested the attacker, a 24-year-old Polish man from Ostrowiec Świętokrzyski, an industrial city of some 70,000 people in southeastern Poland. The gunman died on the morning of Nov. 9, after several surgeries. Upon investigating, the police also found the bodies of his mother, father, and sister at the family’s home. 

Interior Minister Marcin Kierwiński initially described the gunman as fascinated by far-right ideologies, but authorities backed away from a motive Nov. 9, and a prosecutor said nothing categorically ties him to a particular ideology. Prosecutors opened a terrorism investigation Nov. 8 and are checking whether anyone inspired or helped him.

Cardinal Ryś had invited residents to a Nov. 8 Mass at St. Mary’s Basilica, which overlooks the square where the shooting happened, but due to the ongoing police investigation, it was moved to St. Anne’s Church. He told worshippers that Jesus is faster than bullets and that death does not break relationships, Interia quoted him as saying.

Church leaders across Poland also responded. Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda of Gdańsk, president of the Polish bishops’ conference, said he was “deeply shaken,” and Archbishop Wojciech Polak, the primate of Poland, said he was praying for the dead and wounded, according to an unofficial translation. 

President Karol Nawrocki declared two days of national mourning for Nov. 8 and 9, while the City of Kraków’s mourning continues through Nov. 11. The square and St. Mary’s Basilica reopened Nov. 9. 

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Pope Leo XIV sent a telegram Nov. 8 to Cardinal Ryś, signed by Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, expressing his spiritual closeness to all those affected. 

Invoking Mary, Queen of Poland, the pope “implores the gift of Christian hope for the families stricken by grief,” according to a Zeale News translation of the telegram. He also imparted his apostolic blessing and urged everyone to persevere in the pursuit of peace and harmony. The Holy Father was in Uruguay at the time as part of his first trip to South America as pope.

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