Knife attack at a monastery in Jarosław: priest dies, Ukrainian detained. Town declares mourning

On Thursday at around 9:30 a.m., a man with a knife attacked five people on the grounds of the Benedictine nuns' abbey in Jarosław, Poland. One of them, a priest, succumbed to his injuries. Police detained a 31-year-old Ukrainian citizen at the scene. According to the prosecutor's office, he had arrived in Poland from Germany during the night. The prosecutor's office does not yet know the motive. TVN24 ↗

The town, about 30 kilometres from the Ukrainian border, has declared mourning until the end of the week and strengthened police patrols. Alongside the investigation, a debate has also started in Poland about how the attack by one individual will affect attitudes toward the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians living in the country. TVN24 ↗ Overnight into Friday the picture became fuller. The breath test on the detainee came out at zero, prosecutors postponed procedural steps with him, and according to the Ukrainian ambassador in Warsaw he is in a psychiatric hospital. The Benedictine nuns in Puławy requested police protection, and an analysis for Rzeczpospolita showed that reactions on social media contained almost no sorrow for the slain priest.

What happened at the abbey

According to prosecutor Bożena Harasz-Wołoszyn of the prosecutor's office in Przemyśl, the man entered the grounds and went first to the kitchen, where he took a knife, and the attack then moved to the church in the abbey. He attacked four men and one woman; three of them are clergy and two are laypeople. Blood was taken from the attacker for alcohol and drug tests, and at the time of the prosecutor's office statement he had not yet been questioned. According to Polish media, he should hear the charge within 48 hours of being detained. TVN24 ↗

The statement from the prosecutor's office in Jarosław was broadcast by TVN24 (in Polish, just under five minutes).



According to the superior of the Benedictine nuns, Barbara Dendor, quoted by Wirtualna Polska, they did not know the man. He came in shorts and a T-shirt even though it was cold, and the priest who died tried to stop him. The director of the hospital in Jarosław said the priest, who had numerous stab and slash wounds to the chest and abdomen, bled to death in the emergency department. WP has a version from two unnamed witnesses that the man asked the priests for material help in the morning and they sent him away because, in their view, he seemed drunk or on drugs. The prosecutor's office did not confirm this version. Wirtualna Polska ↗

The prosecutor also said that during the night the man was heading toward the Korczowa border crossing but did not cross the border, and that they do not yet know how he got to the abbey. Voivode Teresa Kubas-Hul said in the afternoon that one wounded person is still in serious condition and the lives of the other three are no longer in danger. naTemat ↗

On Thursday evening the prosecutor's office added that the breath test on the detainee came out at "0.0" and that blood was taken from him for a test for psychoactive substances, the result of which is not yet available. No procedural steps were taken with him that day and, according to the prosecutor's office, doctors are to decide when they will be possible. Polsat News ↗ Ukrainian ambassador to Poland Vasyl Bodnar said late in the evening that the attacker is hospitalised in a psychiatric hospital and that, in his view, the attack had no ethnic or national background. Neither the Polish prosecutor's office nor the police have confirmed this yet. Censor.NET ↗ The condition of the injured has meanwhile improved. One of the priests has already returned home, the other has undergone two operations and his condition is serious but stable, and the other two are in no danger. Gość Niedzielny ↗

Two dead priests who weren't

Just before 2 p.m., the Rzeszów cathedral published a mourning notice on Facebook about two dead priests. A few minutes later it corrected the notice: the second priest was alive and in the operating theatre. The cathedral admitted that an "enormous information chaos" had arisen around the tragedy. The voivode then also denied the death of the second priest at a press conference and asked people not to spread false information, of which there is, in her words, "a great deal in the public space". Wirtualna Polska ↗ naTemat ↗

Some Polish media also picked up the erroneous notice in the first minutes, and it reached Slovakia too. Headlines from TASR, SME, TA3 and HNonline, published between 2:30 and 3 p.m., spoke of two dead priests, even though the cathedral had by then already corrected its notice. In the body text, however, they attributed it to the cathedral. TASR and HNonline later corrected their headlines. TA3 still had its headline unchanged by the time this article went to press, although it had corrected the text beneath it to one dead. TA3 ↗

Politicians: the state must be firm

Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X that "the murderer from Jarosław is in the hands of the Polish police", that "the perpetrator is a citizen of Ukraine" and that he will be punished with "the full severity of Polish law". President Karol Nawrocki wrote that the attack "requires a firm response from the state" and that "the principles and values of our community must be respected by all who stay in our country". TVN24 ↗

Confederation co-chair Krzysztof Bosak demands that the perpetrator be brought before a court as soon as possible and urged prosecutors to publish the circumstances and the motive, because "such things must not be swept under the rug". PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński wrote that the tragedy cannot simply be passed over. In his view, the services should establish the course of the attack, the motive, the circumstances of the attacker's stay in Poland and whether he had previously been under surveillance. Onet ↗

Volodymyr Zelensky spoke up from Kyiv. "A citizen of Ukraine committed a terrible crime. We are shocked by this evil," he wrote, adding that the perpetrator must bear full responsibility under the law. Onet ↗ The Ukrainian embassy in Warsaw firmly condemned the attack and called for "the pain not to turn into hatred or further violence". Rzeczpospolita ↗

"We are on the verge of a lynching"

The mayor of Jarosław, Marcin Nazarewicz, announced more police patrols. "We are slightly worried about secondary reactions," he said. According to him, about 350 Ukrainian citizens are registered in the town. TVN24 ↗

The concern has also spread beyond Jarosław. In Puławy in the Lublin Voivodeship, the Divine Mercy parish and the convent of the Benedictine sisters, that is, of the same order in which the attack took place, asked for police protection, and police deployed additional patrols there day and night. This was confirmed by both parish priest Marcin Grzesiak and Inspector Agnieszka Falandysz of the local police headquarters. Wirtualna Polska ↗

Sociologist Marcin Piotrowski of the Folkowisko foundation, which works in the Polish-Ukrainian borderlands, told Rzeczpospolita that the region is "on the brink of lynch-mob sentiment". He describes how references to the Volhynia massacre have appeared on social media. He says that about 120 Ukrainian children, housed in a boarding school without their parents, study in Jarosław and encounter various displays of aggression. The foundation plans a silent march "against violence and disinformation". Rzeczpospolita ↗

Catholic commentator Tomasz Terlikowski warns in the same daily that the act of one individual could easily become a pretext for pressure to stop aid to Ukraine. "Every act of violence against Ukrainians today serves exclusively Russia," he said, and he called on the bishops to speak up. Przemyśl Archbishop Adam Szal has so far asked the faithful to pray for the dead priest and for the wounded. Rzeczpospolita ↗

On Thursday evening the church hierarchy also spoke up. Primate of Poland Wojciech Polak called for the act of one person not to "give birth to hatred in our hearts". The chairman of the bishops' conference, Tadeusz Wojda, promised prayer for the victims and also "for the conversion of the perpetrator", and the Przemyśl metropolitan Adam Szal asked that no one exploit the tragedy to incite hatred. Wirtualna Polska ↗ An analysis of social media comments shows what the debate they are speaking into looks like. It was prepared for Rzeczpospolita by the Anubis_RF system of the Res Futura analytical collective. Anger and indignation made up 31.9 percent of reactions, irony and sarcasm 29 percent, contempt and insults 21.7 percent and distrust 12.9 percent, while sadness and compassion made up only 3.4 percent. Users most often attributed blame to Ukrainians as a nation, in 25.2 percent of reactions, and to the government, in 22.7 percent, and to the perpetrator himself in only eleven percent. Rzeczpospolita ↗

Limits of this view

Warnings about a lynching have so far come mainly from people working on Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation and from commentators. The police have not yet reported any specific attacks on Ukrainians after Thursday's tragedy. The attacker's motive is not known to the prosecutor's office either, the results of the alcohol and drug tests are not yet in, and the version about refused help rests on two unnamed witnesses. The name of the dead priest was published by the cathedral; neither the police nor the prosecutor's office has officially confirmed it. SITA ↗ The claim about the psychiatric hospital comes so far only from the Ukrainian ambassador; Polish authorities say only that doctors will decide on the timing of procedural steps. And the analysis of reactions on social media is an automated analysis of public comments, not a representative opinion survey.

What hotinfo is watching

*Photo: the Benedictine nuns' abbey in Jarosław. Author Patryk Duszkiewicz, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0.*