The Primate of Poland, Cardinal Jozef Glemp, has called on his Catholic countrymen to stop putting up Christian crosses near the former Nazi death camp, Auschwitz, his office said yesterday.
The cardinal wrote to bishops asking them to "do everything in their power to stop the action, which is not a church action".
Catholic activists want to put up 152 wooden crosses around a controversial eight-metre-high wooden crucifix near the death camp to commemorate 152 Catholics executed in the camp in 1941. The crucifix and new additions have provoked outrage from the Jewish community and been criticised by some Polish politicians.
The main cross, which had adorned the altar of an open air mass held by Pope John Paul II in 1979 at Auschwitz, was erected 10 years later near the camp.
Jewish groups have called for the cross to be removed, arguing it violates an agreement between international bodies to keep the site free of all religious, ideological and political symbols. Officials from the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem asked the Polish government on Sunday to remove the cross. Mr Marek Siwiec, an aide to President Kwasniewski, said on Monday that the crosses should be removed.