Trump’s planned visit to Pennsylvania Catholic shrine with Polish president is canceled
A man prays at the Candlelight Chapel at the National Shrine to Czestochowa in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, on April 2, 2005, the day Pope John Paul II died. / Credit: William Thomas Cain/Getty Images Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Sep 19, 2024 / 17:15 pm (CNA).
Former President Donald Trump is no longer planning to attend an event with Polish President Andrzej Duda at a Catholic Marian shrine in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, on Sunday afternoon, Sept. 22.
The campaign’s scheduled stop at the National Shrine of Our Lady of Czestochowa in Doylestown has been canceled. The reason for the change in Trump’s schedule is unclear.
On Sunday afternoon, the Polish-American Smolensk Disaster Commemoration Committee will unveil a monument at the shrine’s cemetery to commemorate the Polish solidarity movement and its fight for independence against the Soviet-backed communist regime of the 1940s through the 1980s.
A spokesperson for the shrine could not be reached for comment.
The shrine pays homage to the historic Black Madonna icon in the southern Polish city of Czestochowa. According to legend, the original icon in Poland was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist on a tabletop that was built by Jesus Christ when he was a carpenter. The existence and veneration of the icon in Poland are well documented as early as the 1300s.
The eastern Pennsylvania shrine was constructed in 1955 and underwent renovations in the 1960s. The icon of the Black Madonna in Doylestown is a copy of the Polish icon and was blessed by St. John XXIII, according to the shrine’s website.
Bucks County is an important battleground in the swing state of Pennsylvania. President Joe Biden won the county by less than 4.4 percentage points in 2020 and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the county by about three-quarters of a percentage point in 2016.
