Congress Mourns Polish President Lech Kaczynski – Patron of World Congress of Families IV
ROCKFORD, Ill., April 12 /
Christian Newswire/ -- World Congress of Families Managing Director Larry Jacobs expressed shock and sadness at the death of Polish President, Lech Kaczynski, who died Saturday in a plane crash on route to a ceremony commemorating the victims of the 1940 massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest.
"President Kaczynski was one of the strongest pro-family leaders in Europe," Jacobs commented. "Despite intense pressure from the European Union, he stood firm for the right to life. The late president also opposed the legalization of prostitution and the normalization of homosexuality."
Even before he became president, Kaczynski was an outspoken defender of the family. As mayor of Warsaw, he twice blocked gay-pride parades.
President Kaczynski was a patron of World Congress of Families IV, which took place in Warsaw, May 11-13, 2007.
"We were honored by President Kaczynski's support for our fourth World Congress," said Jacobs. "In fact, the initial meeting of the International Planning Committee for the Warsaw Congress was held with his encouragement in the office of then-Prime Minister Kazimierz Marcinkiewicz."
In a letter of support, read at the opening session of WCF IV, President Kaczynski declared, "I cordially welcome all of you assembled at the World Congress of Families IV...I accept with satisfaction the kind words of International Secretary of the Congress, Allan Carlson, about Poland as the bastion of strong faith and strong families in the increasingly laicizing Europe whose inhabitants are getting older."
Click here to read the full text of President Kaczynski's letter to the World Congress of Families.
Jacobs observed: "Lech Kaczynski was a faithful servant of the Polish nation, a good friend of the World Congress of Families and a champion of the natural family. We join the people of Poland in mourning his passing."
For more information on World Congress of Families, visit
www.worldcongress.org. To schedule an interview with Larry Jacobs, contact Don Feder at 508-405-1337 or
dfeder@rcn.com.
The World Congress of Families (WCF) is an international network of pro-family organizations, scholars, leaders and people of goodwill from more than 60 countries that seek to restore the natural family as the fundamental social unit and the 'seedbed' of civil society (as found in the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, 1948). The WCF was founded in 1997 by Allan Carlson and is a project of The Howard Center for Family, Religion & Society in Rockford, Illinois (www.profam.org). To date, there have been five World Congresses of Families – Prague (1997), Geneva (1999), Mexico City (2004) and Warsaw, Poland (2007). The fifth World Congress of Families was held in Amsterdam, Netherlands, August 10-12, 2009 (www.worldcongress.nl and www.worldcongress.org).
