In Warsaw’s largest square, Plac Jozefa Pilsudskiego, over 100,000 people joined a solemn memorial mass on Saturday to honor the late President Lech Kaczynski, his wife Maria, and other top officials killed in last week’s plane crash.
“There are few moments in the history of a nation when we know and feel that we are entirely together,” acting president Bronislaw Komorowski told the crowd at the square. “The Smolensk air disaster is one of these moments.”
Many people waved Polish flags and the iconic Solidarity banner – the union that ultimately brought down communism in Poland, and from where Kaczynski began his political career.
This was the final day for Poles to see the first couple. Since their bodies had been returned to Warsaw, they had been lying in state at the Presidential Palace, where thousands upon thousands of Poles waited in long snaking lines to pay their last respects to their perished leader and his wife.
The first couple and 94 others, including many of Poland’s elite from politics, the military and clergy, were killed when the president’s plane went down in Smolensk, Russia on April 10. They had been on their way to Russia to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the mass execution of Polish elite during World War II at Katyn, 12 miles from the plane crash site. The plane had clipped the tops of trees when approaching the airport in heavy fog.
At 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, the caskets of the first couple left the square for a procession to Warsaw Metropolitan Church where a mass was conducted by Henryk Muszyski, the Primate of Poland. After the Mass, an all-night vigil began.
The caskets of the Kaczynskis are to be delivered by military aircraft to Krakow on Sunday for burial in the courtyard of Wawel Castle. The decision to inter them at Wawel, a place traditionally reserved for the nation’s heroes, including poets and kings, is a controversial one among Poles, with some calling the decision “hasty and emotional.”
Among the leaders who have canceled their trips are some of the West’s top officials including U.S. President Barack Obama, Swedish King Carl XVI Gustaf and Foreign Minister Carl Bildt, and Finnish President Tarja Halonen, according to an Associated Press report.
“I spoke with acting President [Bronislaw] Komorowski and told him that I regret that I will not be able to make it to Poland due to the volcanic ash that is disrupting air travel over Europe,” said Obama in a White House statement.
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero along with King Juan Carlos I and Queen Sophia also canceled their trips.
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