News
TRH arrive in Poland for the first day of a nine-day tour of Central Europe
15th March 2010
The Prince of Wales and The Duchess of Cornwall arrived in Warsaw, Poland for the start of nine-day tour of Central Europe which will include visits to the Czech Republic and Hungary.
For the first engagement of the trip, The Prince and The Duchess honoured the memory of a radical Polish priest whose brutal murder by communist secret police helped galvanise his country's fight for freedom.
The Prince took part in a wreath-laying ceremony in Warsaw at the tomb of Father Jerzy Popieluszko, who was killed in 1984 after opposing his homeland's authoritarian government.
In freezing temperatures, The Prince and The Duchess, who wore a paisley dress and purple coat, stood facing the large cross-shaped tomb as a trumpeter played a solemn tune.
They touched a wreath of The Prince of Wales' feathers after it was placed by a Polish soldier on the grave at St Stanislaw Kotka, the priest's former parish church.
The Prince's handwritten note on the floral tribute read: "In ever lasting memory, Charles."
Father Jerzy, 37, was a symbol for the underground democratic movement in his homeland.
During the early 1980s the priest denounced the regime from the pulpit and spoke out in support of the trade union Solidarity, attracting tens of thousands to his church.
But in October 1984 he was kidnapped, brutally beaten and his body was found in a reservoir west of the capital. The priest's funeral attracted around half a million mourners.
In the church's basement Their Royal Highnesses were taken on a guided tour of a museum dedicated to the Father Jerzy, who will be beatified in the summer.
The priest's life and the successful story of Poland's battle to overthrow its communist government were told in pictures, artefacts and moving images.
Graphic images of his bound body were projected onto a wall in a room called Golgotha, where The Prince watched intently as Father Zygmunt Malacki from St Stanislaw Kotka described, through an interpreter, how the priest's killers weighed his body down with stones.
In the evening The Prince and The Duchess were guests of honour at a state banquet hosted by President Lech Kaczynski and his wife Maria at their presidential palace in Warsaw.
The Prince gave a speech praising the historical links between Britain and Poland - from the half-Polish King Canute who invaded England in 1014 to the Polish pilots who flew in the Battle of Britain.
Some of The Prince’s Charities have been working in Poland for almost two decades and he told the guests who included senior figures from the worlds of politics, religion and the arts that he wanted to do what he could to help the nation.
He said: "I was particularly keen to do what little I could to help your country after the collapse of Communism having for so long held a combination of profound admiration and heartfelt sympathy for the appalling suffering of the Polish people."
At the end of his address The Prince spoke a little Polish and proposed a toast in the language, to the President, The Duchess and the Polish people.