NEWS & VIEWS
from a CATHOLIC perspective

      WARSAW (CWNews.com) -- Defying orders from their bishops, some Polish Catholics have continued to erect crosses outside the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz.

      More than 100 crosses have been put up in the fields near the Nazi camp in recent weeks. Conservative Catholics, with some aid from Polish emigrants in the United States, began erecting the crosses after Jewish groups called for the removal of one large cross from a building which had once housed a Carmelite convent.

      Last week Cardinal Jozef Glemp, the primate of Poland, called upon Catholics to halt the erection of crosses. But at least some Polish Catholics have vowed to continue their campaign.

      On Friday, August 14-- the feast of St. Maximillian Kolbe, a martyr who died at Auschwitz-- Bishop Tadeusz Rakoczy renewed the call for an end to the cross-building campaign. "It is a paradox and an absurdity that someone wants to turn the cross against the Church in Poland," the bishop said.