Originally published on Sony Music Unlimited could streaming service
In his early 1980s heyday, the Polish trade unionist Lech Walesa led a mass strike against a regime that maintained something best described as a parody of socialism. Today, he is increasingly tilting at windmills. The strictly Catholic ex-president’s latest object of objection is Madonna’s live appearance in Warsaw on 15th August 2009, where the ‘Like A Prayer’ star is scheduled to play a show to 70,000 Polish fans.
It just so happens that the 15th of August is a Catholic as well as national holiday. Poland is meant to celebrate the Virgin Mary’s assumption and its 1920 military victory against the Red Army. Reason enough for nationalist-catholic politician Marian Brudzynski, leader of the ‘Committee for the Protection of Faith and National Traditions Pro Polonia‘, to start a campaign against Madonna’s filth. In his view, the singer is a “pervert” and “anti-Virgin Mary”, and her concerts “neo-pagan spectacles”. In an interview with the daily paper Dziennik, Lech Walesa gave the campaign his full support.
This is not the first time that Madonna, who was also brought up a Catholic, faces opposition from the Christian right: earlier this year, Orthodox clerics attempted to stop her from performing at the Winter Palais in St. Petersburg. This was in order to prevent the ‘defilement’ of Alexander Column, a nearby monument capped by the statue of an angel.
To mess with the Orthodox Church, which, like neo-fascism, has been gaining influence since the massive decline of living standards in mid-90s Russia, may not be the wisest choice for the multi-millionaire pop star. In Warsaw, meanwhile, Brudzynski’s campaign has not met with much response from the local authorities. Not one to give up easily, Brudzynski announced that daily prayers against the Madonna concert will be held in front of Warsaw town hall. I pray these people will never have any say in anything – in Poland or elsewhere.
Note as of January 2017: Those were innocent days when news items such as this passed the in-house censorship of Sony Music Unlimited, reaching thousands of subscribers. Sadly, my prayers proved futile when the religious right won the Polish general elections on 25 October 2015.