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, and one of them, a priest, died of his injuries. Police detained a 31-year-old Ukrainian citizen on the spot, who, according to the prosecutor's office, 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 begun in Poland about how one person's attack will affect attitudes toward the hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians in the country. TVN24 ↗

What happened at the abbey

According to prosecutor Bożena Harasz-Wołoszyn of the prosecutor's office in Przemyśl, the man entered the grounds, first going into the kitchen, where he took a knife, and then the attack 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 is to hear the charge within 48 hours of detention. TVN24 ↗

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



According to Barbara Dendor, the Mother Superior of the Benedictine nuns, quoted by Wirtualna Polska, they did not know the man; he arrived 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 that the priest, with numerous stab and cut wounds to the chest and abdomen, bled to death in the emergency department. WP has a version from two unnamed witnesses that in the morning the man asked the priests for material assistance and they sent him away because, in their view, he seemed drunk or drugged. The prosecutor's office has not confirmed 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 it is not yet known how he got to the abbey. In the afternoon, Voivode Teresa Kubas-Hul stated that one wounded person is still in serious condition and the lives of the other three are no longer in danger. naTemat ↗

Two dead priests who were not

Just before 2 p.m., the cathedral in Rzeszów published a mourning announcement on Facebook about two dead priests. A few minutes later it corrected the announcement: the second priest was alive and in the operating theatre. The cathedral admitted that an "enormous information chaos" had arisen around the tragedy. Wirtualna Polska ↗ 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, in her words, there is "a great deal in the public space". naTemat ↗

Some Polish media also picked up the erroneous announcement in the first minutes, and it reached Slovakia as well. 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 announcement. In the body text, however, they attributed the announcement to the cathedral. TASR and HNonline later corrected their headlines; TA3 still had its headline unchanged at the time this article went to press, although it had corrected the text below 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 are staying in our country". TVN24 ↗

Co-chairman of Confederation Krzysztof Bosak demands that the perpetrator be brought to court as soon as possible, and urged the prosecutor's office to publish the circumstances and the motive, because "such things must not be swept under the carpet". PiS chairman Jarosław Kaczyński wrote that the tragedy cannot simply be passed over, and that, 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 responded from Kyiv. "A citizen of Ukraine has committed a terrible crime. We are shaken 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 brink of a lynching"

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

Sociologist Marcin Piotrowski of the Folkowisko foundation, which works in the Polish-Ukrainian borderland, told Rzeczpospolita that the region is "on the verge of lynch-mob sentiment". He describes how references to the Volhynia massacre have appeared on social media, and says that around 120 Ukrainian children are studying in Jarosław, housed in a boarding house without their parents, and that they encounter various manifestations of aggression. The foundation is planning a silent march "against violence and disinformation". Rzeczpospolita ↗

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

Limits of this picture

Warnings about lynching so far come mainly from people who work on Polish-Ukrainian reconciliation and from commentators. Police have not yet reported any specific attacks on Ukrainians after Thursday's tragedy. Even the prosecutor's office does not know the attacker's motive, the results of the alcohol and drug tests are not yet available, 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 ↗

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