BALHAM, London (ChurchMilitant.com) – Far-left feminists associated with Soros-funded pro-abort groups targeted with hate speech a Polish church in London on Easter Sunday after Metropolitan Police unlawfully disrupted the church’s Good Friday service and ordered worshippers to disperse or face arrest.
Anti-Catholic Strajk Kobiet (Women’s Strike) erected a billboard on advertising space above worshippers who were forced to stand or kneel in the church’s forecourt for social distancing reasons during the Easter Sunday Holy Eucharist.
A worshipper at Christ the King Church in Balham, south London, told Church Militant he was shocked to see the words on the display: “Catholic Church abuses Polish women” printed in Polish and English just above him as he prayed.
“The police looked at me as if I was mad when I knelt on the pavement,” he said. “They came again on Easter Sunday to check if we were obeying the COVID regulations but did nothing to remove what was clearly an illegal hate speech sign.”
Orchestrated ‘Hit Job’
Requesting anonymity, the faithful Catholic, who lives around 15 minutes away from the parish, also sent Church Militant a photograph of the billboard, claiming the “hatred and attack” on the Polish church was a direct consequence of the police raid on Good Friday.
Polish sources based in England told Church Militant that “the phone call snitching on the congregation on Good Friday, followed by the defamatory poster campaign on Easter Sunday, was a hit job orchestrated by the pro-abortion Strajk Kobiet.”
A source who researched Strajk Kobiet during its violent all-Poland pro-abortion protests targeting the Catholic Church said he identified the far-left group by the logo on the poster and pointed out the associations of Women’s Strike with other Soros-funded groups.
‘Two-Tier’ Policing
In comments to Church Militant, London Assembly member David Kurten called “the billboard accusing the Polish Church of abusing women both defamatory and intimidatory.”
“The attitude of the police towards worshippers at the Polish Catholic church in Balham has been appalling,” Kurten lamented. “People around the world are disgusted with the Metropolitan Police for shutting down the Good Friday service, yet they returned on Sunday to harass Catholics checking on the arbitrary regulations for masks and social distancing.”
Kurten, a candidate for mayor of London, excoriated the “continuing campaign of hate against Christians” and the discriminatory “two-tier policing,” remarking:
If a poster about grooming gangs were erected outside a mosque, no doubt it would be removed immediately and condemned as a hate crime by the woke establishment, yet no action has been taken to remove this message of hate towards Polish Catholics in London.
Church Militant obtained the voice recording of a complaint about the billboard made under the Equality Act 2010 to the Metropolitan Police by a British-Polish family citing the “protected characteristic” of religion. Hate speech based on religion is illegal in Britain.
“I’m Catholic and married to a Polish woman. The Catholic Church has never abused my wife,” the complainant told the police.
“If someone were to erect a [billboard] outside a mosque — say the Finsbury Park Mosque — saying ‘Islam abuses Pakistani women,’ there would be justifiable uproar, and I’m sure you would be right on it,” he added.
Billboard: Illegally Placed?
The police said they are investigating the matter and would have to check if the billboard was legally posted through an authorized advertising space.
Metropolitan Police have also been in touch with the complainant since the complaint was lodged Monday afternoon.
A London-based professional sign maker told Church Militant that the billboard was “paste and paper” and most likely unauthorized.
He noted:
Looks to be a solid print. You can get industrial printers that are five meters wide and could run it in one piece, but you’d need a crew to install it, and it’d be awkward as hell. More often you see the image made up of squares or one-meter-wide drops. Upon closer look, the text doesn’t look uniform, likely hand painted or stenciled.
Church Militant contacted Christ the King Church, Wandsworth police and the archdiocese of Southwark but received no response as of press time.
Ignorant of Parishioner Compliance?
In an interview with Britain’s Daily Mail on Easter Sunday, outraged congregants said that police had overstepped the mark by stopping the Good Friday service.
Tomsz Niewiadomski, 39, said everyone inside the church on Friday was wearing masks and social distancing.
Niewiadomski said:
It’s not right what they did. The police didn’t seem to know the rules. I was standing just inside the door at the back. They came in and said everyone was breaking the law before checking what was in place. They said no one was social distancing and it was unsafe. We know we have to respect the law. It seemed like the police did not know what we could and couldn’t do.
On Good Friday, as police were breaking up the service in Balham, thousands of protestors with scant regard for COVID regulations were allowed to go ahead with a “Kill the Bill” rally in London’s Parliament Square, just under five miles from Christ the King Church.
Canadian Pastor Routs Cops
Meanwhile, a video of Canadian-Polish evangelical pastor Artur Pawlowski giving police a tongue-lashing and demanding they leave his church property on Easter Sunday has gone viral.
Police responded to the video claiming that only “one uniformed member of the Calgary Police Service attended a call” in “relation to a religious gathering being held at the Street Church located at 4315 26 Ave. S.E.”
Blasting the police for “doxing” the church, journalist Ezra Levant accused the police of lying.
“We all saw the video. You didn’t have one uniformed member there. There were five of your thugs. With guns. And every damned one of you broke s. 176(2) of the Criminal Code — disturbing a religious service,” the editor of Rebel Media tweeted.
Commentators on social media compared the responses from the two Polish churches and said that the Polish priests in London should have responded like Pawlowski and refused to comply with the unlawful police order to disperse.
Church Militant confirmed that the billboard was partly ripped by Monday afternoon, with around two-thirds of the poster removed from the display.
