Friday is only fish-free in practicing Catholic households in Poland, but the archbishop of Warsaw decided to make an exception regarding meat for May 1 this year, given that next weekend will be one extended with family reunions, according to AFP.
Other dioceses also took the same measure and decided to exempt their faithful from fasting on this day, aware that tradition would not resist the temptation to grill a piece of meat on a beautiful spring day.
This year, “Friday, May 1, marks the beginning of the May weekend, that is, a series of free days conducive to family and social gatherings and allowing the Easter holidays to be fully experienced,” said the archbishop of the Polish capital, Adrian Galbas.
“After considering pastoral reasons, I hereby grant, in accordance with can. 87 art. 1 of the Code of Canon Law, the dispensation from abstinence from meat on Fridays for all persons living within the boundaries of the archdiocese of Warsaw,” he added in a statement obtained by AFP on Saturday.
Canon 87 art. 1 of the Code of Canon Law, available on the Holy See's website, allows a bishop to “dispense the faithful from both universal and particular norms adopted by the supreme authority of the Church” if he considers that this is “beneficial for their spiritual good”.
Homeland of Pope John Paul II, Poland remains a bastion of Catholicism in Europe, even as religious practice and vocations are in decline.
While about three out of four Poles say they have a Catholic culture, only one in three say they attend Sunday Mass, half of what they did in the early 1980s.
Photo: Alena Sobaleva | Dreamstime.com
