Polish Catholic bishops’ leader sends blessing to EWTN European meeting

Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, Poland, Aug 30, 2021 / 04:00 am

The president of Poland’s Catholic bishops’ conference sent his blessing to a meeting of EWTN affiliates and partners in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska, southern Poland.

Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki offered his blessing in a video recorded for the EWTN affiliates and partners’ European meeting on Aug. 26-29.

Forty people from 15 countries took part in the event, including Ksenija Abramović, the director of Laudato TV, a Catholic television station in Croatia affiliated with EWTN.

“I always come back from EWTN European meetings with new inspirations for my television,” she commented.

EWTN is the largest religious media network in the world. Its 11 TV channels are broadcast in multiple languages 24 hours a day, seven days a week to over 350 million television households in more than 145 countries and territories.

EWTN is currently celebrating the 40th anniversary of its foundation by Mother Angelica.

Speakers at the four-day meeting in Poland included Msgr. Tomasz Trafny, a priest of the Archdiocese of Lublin and an official at the Pontifical Council for Culture, and Fr. Paweł Rytel-Andrianik, director of the Office for Foreign Communication of the Polish bishops’ conference.

Guests from various branches of EWTN and its partner television stations -- including from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, and Poland -- also delivered lectures.

On Aug. 26, Polish bishops’ conference spokesman Fr. Leszek Gęsiak S.J. celebrated Mass for the meeting’s participants in the Sanctuary of St. John Paul II in Kraków, southern Poland.

Bishop Andrzej Siemieniewski of Legnica presided at Mass on Aug. 27 in the Chapel of the Miraculous Picture of Merciful Jesus and the Tomb of St. Faustina Kowalska in Kraków.

On Aug. 28, Msgr. Trafny offered Mass at the Basilica of the Presentation of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Wadowice, where the Polish pope St. John Paul II was baptized in 1920.

Fr. Teofil Czarniak, the provincial of the Immaculate Conception province of the Order of Friars Minor, celebrated Mass on Aug. 29 in the chapel of the sanctuary in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska.

Reflecting on the importance of the meeting, which brought together professionals to share their skills, Ulf Silfverling of EWTN Nordic said: “Together we can do more.”