The priest burned books. Now he will organize a retreat at the Legia stadium

Father Rafał Jarosiewicz, who was once famous for burning Harry Potter books, will lead a one-day retreat “Jesus at the Legia Stadium” scheduled for June 7, 2025. During the event, which, as the name suggests, will take place at the Legia Stadium from 5 to 11 p.m., twenty different conferences on faith will be organized.

Father Jarosiewicz will lead a retreat at the Legia Stadium

Tickets for the retreat cost from 40 to 90 PLN, but their price may still increase. On the Legia Warsaw club website, we read that the amount collected from tickets is to be used to cover the rental of the stadium and the organization of the event. The organization of “Jesus at the Legia Stadium” is the responsibility of the Usprawiedliwieni 2103 community, whose face is none other than Father Rafał Jarosiewicz himself.

The priest stirred up controversy among the public due to his retreat in Leszno, after which some of the participants of the event stated that he used improper practices. “They grabbed the students by the head, after which these people fell to the ground, shook, some lost consciousness or fell asleep, screamed, behaved as if they were stupefied or hypnotized,” one of the participants reportedly told “Gazeta Wyborcza”.

A little later, in 2019, an incident occurred that was also widely reported outside of Poland. Father Jarosiewicz organized a bonfire after Sunday mass, in which so-called “magical objects” were burned, namely Harry Potter books, Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight, Hindu figurines, and a Hello Kitty umbrella. After this incident, the priest published a statement in which he called the event “unfortunate”. “The fact that books and other objects were burned was unfortunate. However, it was not intended to mock any social group or religion, nor was it aimed at books as such or culture,” wrote Father Rafał Jarosiewicz at the time.