Spend up large ... and then repent

KATOWICE - Poles are being given the chance to reconcile their devotion to Mammon with their duties as Catholics after a confessional booth was installed at a new shopping centre in the southern Polish city of Katowice.

Customers can now receive absolution in between buying Christmas presents.

A taste for consumerism has been developing rapidly in the former communist countries of central Europe and the Catholic Church in Poland worries that increasing numbers of the faithful have spent too much time on pilgrimages to shopping heaven rather than attending church.

With the approach of the Christmas shopping spree, the church in Katowice has decided to compete for custom in the city's Silesia City Centre shopping precinct.

Sunday shopping has become something of a national family recreational activity in Poland. Large modern shopping centres with creches and a variety of restaurants and bars provide what is perceived to be exciting entertainment in previously sleepy towns and cities.

Consumerism has been booming in the seven of last year's 10 European Union entrants which had been Soviet satellites - nearly all of them Catholic. Poland is the largest of the new entrants and has the most powerful church which is tightly bound up with the country's sense of its national identity. More than 90 per cent of the population is Catholic.

This month, the church opened its first shopping-centre mini-chapel in the hope that shoppers will drop in to repent before carrying on with their mission to purchase.

The chapel was blessed by one of the Poland's most prominent theologians, Father Arkadiusz Wuwer. The priest, who lectures at the University of Silesia in Katowice, told the congregation that the church wanted to reach out to shoppers and retailers who choose to visit the shopping centre on a Sunday - the day which the church says should be spent in recreation and prayer. Wuwer said: "We will see what kind of fruit this will bear."

Those who choose to make confession at the shopping centre will not have to take communion immediately afterwards but can go to their own church.

The Polish church was ambivalent about the country's entry into the EU. It was keen for Poland to reclaim its place in Western Europe but was wary of perceived moral perils that Western society brought.

An authority on Poland's church, Mirella Eberts, said: "Some may argue that the Polish clergy has been losing the battle over the Christian souls of Poles as they too have fallen into the traps of increasing consumerism and the loosening of moral values."

Katowice is in one of Poland's formerly thriving coalmining areas. Miners were among the shock troops of the Solidarity union, led by Lech Walesa, which merged Catholic fervency with patriotism in the 1980s to forge a political force that could challenge communism in Poland. It is credited with spearheading the end of communist rule in central and eastern Europe.

- INDEPENDENT