POLAND HOLY PLACES TOUR

Polish Holy Places

DAY 1:
Arrival in Warsaw; transfer to a hotel and registration. Evening Mass in the Church of the Holy Cross. Dinner and overnight stay in a hotel.

DAY 2:
Departure for Niepokalanow: Franciscan priory founded in 1927 by St. Maksymilian Maria Kolbe, martyr of Auschwitz. Highlights include mobile Christmas crib, panorama picture of the history of the Polish Church; a Son et Lumiere of the Passion with 130 moving figures (guide recording in Polish, Italian, English, French, and German); opportunity to visit St. Maksymilian's cell. Return to Warsaw; visiting the city churches. Dinner, overnight.

DAY 3:
Leave Warsaw for Krakow via Czestochowa. A Holy Mass in the Black Madonna Chapel at Jasna Gora. Tour of Pauline Monastery and Treasure House. Depart for dinner and overnight stay in a hotel in Krakow.

DAY 4:
Visit to Wawel Cathedral and St. Mary's Basilica in Market Square. Afternoon visit to a modern church in Nowa Huta (the Ark of the Lord); Holy Mass. Free time.

DAY 5:
Early departure for Zakopane and Ludzmierz, the oldest settlement in the Podhale region. Early 15th-century miracle-working statue of Our Lady of Ludzmierz in a l9th-century church. Return to Krakow via Wadowice - birthplace of Pope John Paul ll (Karol Wojtyla), visit to a museum in his house; and Kalwaria Zebrzydowska: l7th-century Observant Franciscan church and priory, with a famous 42-station Calvary scattered over the countryside.

DAY 6:
Krakow. A visit to Lagiewniki Church for a Mass. Shrine of the Divine Mercy, place associated with Saint Sister Faustyna Kowalska (1905-1938). Afternoon free.

DAY 7:
Departure from Krakow with an opportunity to visit the site of the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz with Memorial Museum; Piekary Slaskie, spiritual capital of Silesia, miraculous painting of Our Lady of Social Justice and Charity. Depart for Strzelce Opolskie and St. Anne's Mt., a shrine and Baroque Franciscan church and priory. Dinner and overnight stay in Opole or Wroclaw.

DAY 8:
Early departure for the border at Kudowa Zdroj via Bardo Slaskie on the Nysa Klodzka River (shrine with a statue of the Virgin and Child). Holy Mass. Group departure e.g. for Prague, or alternatively departure flight from Wroclaw Airport.

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