His appeal came amid a spate of harshly worded statements and incidents, including an attempted Molotov cocktail attack on the Warsaw offices of Poland’s ruling centrist Civic Platform (PO) party, state news agency PAP reported.
In a major homily on Sunday, Galbas said the right to express views publicly is a social good but does not excuse speech that “disregards responsibility.”
Citing the tenor of debate in 2025, he recalled the poet Cyprian Norwid’s line that freedom of speech is often confused with the freedom to say anything.
He told worshippers that no genuine Christian can call for xenophobia, contempt, or hatred, including toward people from another party, land or culture, and that using religious arguments to justify such theses is blasphemous.
Galbas was speaking during the central observances of the 41st anniversary of the killing of Father Jerzy Popiełuszko, a Roman Catholic priest revered for supporting Poland’s pro-democracy movement in the 1980s.
The mass was celebrated from the balcony of St. Stanislaus Kostka Church in Warsaw's Żoliborz district, where Popiełuszko served and is buried.
Family members of the priest attended, alongside senior politicians, and a large crowd of clergy and lay faithful filled the church grounds.
In his homily, Galbas said that truth matters in public, national and personal life.
He told the crowd that public life must be anchored in truth, otherwise “social life falls apart and democracy, sooner or later, turns into totalitarianism.”
He warned that false testimony and perjury, as well as flattery and servility, corrode character and community.
He said today’s “world of hate,” a reference to abusive speech, can lead to the public condemnation of innocent people.
He added that the media should not intrude into the private lives of public figures if doing so would threaten their intimacy or freedom.
Galbas reminded listeners that Catholic teaching requires attempts to repair harm done to another person’s reputation.
He called the Church a place where truth must have primacy and where the pursuit of gain or empty glory has no place.
“Truth is the foundation of freedom,” he said.
Earlier in the day, a wreath was laid at Popiełuszko’s grave by officials during a military honor guard.
Popiełuszko, born in 1947, became a spiritual leader for Solidarity, the independent trade union that challenged communist rule.
Beginning in 1982 he celebrated monthly “Masses for the Homeland,” which drew large crowds and became a symbol of peaceful resistance.
He was abducted in October 1984 by officers of the communist security service and murdered.
His body was found dumped in a water reservoir in central Poland.
Jerzy Popiełuszko, pictured in August 1981. Photo: IPN
Popiełuszko was beatified in 2010, and his canonization cause opened in 2014 in Créteil, France.
Officials have said that Popiełuszko was a key figure in modern Polish history and that his death was a defining moment on his country’s road to freedom from communist oppression.
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Source: IAR, PAP