Architects protest against the erection of a giant statue of the pope in Częstochowa

photo: gazeta.pl

Częstochowa (Poland) - A fourteen-meter tall statue of Pope John Paul II is stirring great passions in the southern Polish city of Częstochowa a day before its unveiling. Hundreds of people protested on the social network Facebook against the statue being turned away from the city. Architects, in a letter sent to local authorities, claim that erecting the giant monument will be a disaster for the city. Polish media report this.
    The statue will stand on a hill above the city, paradoxically in a place called the Park of Sacred Miniatures, which has so far been visited by tourists for the replicas of significant Christian temples from around the world. The park owner initially planned to orient the giant white monument so that it faced away from the city. This sparked a wave of protests on Facebook, after which the park management decided to change their plans on Wednesday. "The statue will be oriented towards the city, so the protest is pointless. At first, we wanted to place it this way, but later we changed the original plans due to weather conditions. However, it turned out that their impact would not be so great, so the statue of the pope can be turned towards the city," said park representative Piotr Kaleta to the Dziennik Zachodni newspaper.
    The park owner originally planned to erect a ten-meter statue, but when he learned that there is a three-meter taller monument of the Polish pope in Chile, he decided to surpass it by another meter. Because of the statue's size, the Association of Polish Architects came forward with even more emphatic protests, stating in a letter to local authorities and the church that the statue will be a disaster for the city's appearance and that its erection should be abandoned. According to the architects, it will completely inappropriately change the current perspective in a place that has until now been a peaceful counterpart to the center. "The main problem is not the form or material of the statue, but its placement and scale," said architect Pawel Korzewski on the news site Gazeta.pl.
    However, the Częstochowa city hall did not respond to the protests, and according to local media, the assembly of the statue's parts was completed during the day to prepare for the ceremonial unveiling on Saturday.
    Residents in the immediate vicinity of the park are reportedly divided in their opinions about the statue. Some welcome their "famous neighbor" and look forward to the anticipated fame of their district, while others fear an influx of tourists. "When he was pope, he said he didn't want anyone to build monuments for him," recalled one resident of the nearby neighborhood on Gazeta.pl.