Resolution declaring Jesus king of Polish district annulled

The decision by a small rural district in Poland to declare Jesus as its king has been overturned by the government-appointed provincial governor, who determined that local authorities do not have the legal authority to name Christ as their monarch.

Last month, the council of Maków, a district of around 45,000 people that lies 80km north of Warsaw, adopted a resolution enthroning Jesus Christ as its king. The council’s chairman, Dariusz Wierzbicki, noted that it was the first district in Poland to do so.

“We submit ourselves to His rule,” read the document. “We entrust to Him our daily affairs, family life, local government and social matters, believing that, through His grace, they will be conducted in a proper manner and in accordance with God’s will.”

The resolution was adopted with the votes of seven councillors, all from the national-conservative Law and Justice (PiS) party, which is Poland’s main opposition at the national level.

Meanwhile, councillors from the centrist Civic Coalition (KO) and centre-right Third Way (Trzecia Droga) – which are part of Poland’s more liberal ruling coalition – abstained from voting.

One of them, Mirosław Augustyniak, who is also the district mayor, said that, although as a Catholic he agreed with the resolution’s content, as a public official he believed that its legal basis was questionable.

Those concerns have now been confirmed by Mariusz Frankowski, governor of the Mazovia province in which Maków is located, who has invalidated the resolution after finding that it “was adopted in significant violation of the law”.

Frankowski is a member of KO and, like the governors in each of Poland’s 16 provinces, was appointed by the national government.

In the justification for his decision – which was issued last Friday but only reported today – he wrote that the actions taken in the resolution do not “fall within the competences” granted to district councils under the law.

“Among the tasks specified in the act [on local government], parliament did not stipulate tasks related to the enthronement of Jesus Christ for the jurisdiction of district councils,” Wierzbicki told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.

The district council can still appeal against the governor’s decision within 30 days if it wishes to do so.

Andrzej Kobyliński, a Catholic priest and professor of philosophy at Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University in Lublin, told news website Onet that he opposes resolutions of the type passed in Maków.

They “create unnecessary divisions instead of addressing the real problems of residents” and also “ridicule religion and lead to further secularisation”, argued Kobyliński.

Moreover, “in the Catholic church, Jesus was proclaimed king of the Universe, and in Poland, also king of Poland”, pointed out the priest, so “there is no need to now proclaim him king of individual municipalities or districts”.

In 2016, at a ceremony attended by then-President Andrzej Duda and Prime Minister Beata Szydło – both aligned with PiS – Jesus was declared king of Poland by the Catholic episcopate. Poland is also home to the tallest Jesus statue in the world, Jesus Christ the King of the Universe (pictured above).

Main image credit: Oskierro/Wikimedia Commons (under CC BY-SA 4.0)