Monday, 28 May 2007

The Marian month of May

May in the Catholic calendar is the month of the Blessed Virgin Mary. In the villages that lie just beyond Warsaw's borders, there are many roadside shrines to Our Lady. We have a few close to Jeziorki - in Zamienie, in Zgorzala - and this one, pictured above in Łady (pronounced 'Wuddy'). The shrines are decorated with flags and bunting (in the Marian colours of sky-blue and white), or, in this case, simply flowers. At this time of the evening, you may well see a group of (mostly) women from the local parish singing hymns to the Virgin. Below is the Marian shrine at Zamienie, a village notable for the fact that it was home to a vaccine plant built in the early 1950s. The factory has now gone, the site is awaiting redevelopment. Many new homes will be built here.

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