In Defense Of The Cross

In an article published by Columbia Magazine this past spring, Krzysztof Mazur wrote about the town of Nowa Huta, or “The New Steel Mill,” built by the communists in Poland after World War II. This was a town for workers, intended to make communism more attractive. Polish religiosity and culture were left out.

Catholic residents of Nowa Huta desperately wanted to build a church, but the authorities wouldn’t allow it. Town leaders eventually permitted believers to build a cross in the city square. This cross became the place of worship for the people there. Christians gathered at the cross for prayers, and Mass was said there on occasion. 

In 1960, four years after the cross was built, the authorities in Nowa Huta decided that it was time to take it down and build a school in its place. On April 27, workers and guards arrived in the city square to tear down the cross. As Mazur recounts, the people put up a fight:

A group of women saw what was happening and equipped themselves with shopping carts, brooms, bricks and bottles. A short time later, when a shift at the steel mill was let out, more than a thousand men started making their way toward the cross carrying shovels, pickaxes and other tools. In a spontaneous act of civil disobedience, 5,000 workers and citizens suddenly gathered in the square.

The protests came to a violent end, but the cross was allowed to remain in its place. Saint John Paul II, who was serving as an auxiliary bishop at the time, provided much religious support for people struggling in Nowa Huta. One way was by organizing midnight Masses under the cross each Christmas eve. 

Due to much perseverance, Catholics in Nowa Huta were able to build their first church in 1977.  During his 1979 pilgrimage to Poland, Saint John Paul II said:

Where the Cross is raised, there is raised the sign that that place has now been reached by the Good News of Man’s salvation through Love. Where the cross is raised, there is the sign that evangelization has begun. …A new evangelization has begun, as if it were a new proclamation, even if in reality it is the same as ever. The Cross stands high over the revolving world. 

…From the Cross of Nowa Huta began the new evangelization, the evangelization of the second millennium. This church is a witness and confirmation of it.

This may have been one of the first times that the late Holy Father used the term “new evangelization,” Mazur notes. Mazur also suggests that this cross of Nowa Huta can serve as inspiration for us today, as we see the cross becoming more invisible in our culture. A new evangelization requires that we defend the cross that saved us. 

For more information on the new evangelization, see the shrine’s website. There are a number of resources there, including St. John Paul II’s own words on the importance of such a mission. 

Let us also ask him to pray for us now, that we may defend the cross well in our world today.