From warring rival soccer fans to bickering politicians, Poles put aside their differences this week in collective mourning for their late countryman, Pope John Paul.
Fans from two rival Warsaw soccer clubs, Legia and Polonia, prayed and sang chants together in memory of the man seen as the ultimate moral authority in his mostly Roman Catholic homeland.
During a high-profile match several years ago part of the stadium of Polonia was set on fire during heavy clashes between the clubs' fans.
''It's always easier to promote hatred than friendship but what happened after the death of the Holy Father is positive. We are uniting above long-standing divisions,'' one devout Legia fan, who declined to give his name, told Reuters today.
''There are still animosities but you don't pull a knife when you meet a fan of the opposing team,'' he added.
Earlier in the week rival clubs from Krakow -- Wisla and Cracovia -- buried the hatchet just months after a fan was killed and dozens had serious injuries after a derby match.
Poland is observing six days of mourning, ending in a holiday on Friday for John Paul's funeral, with flags at half mast, entertainment and sports events cancelled and television and radio stations playing mostly programmes about the Pope.
Millions of Poles have attended church ceremonies and huge open-air masses in past days and as many as hundreds of thousands are expected to attend the Pope's funeral in Rome.
Sociologists said Poles were not only rallying around their greatest native son for spiritual reasons but also to cling to something positive.
Poles' lives are filled with the struggles of a society newly joined to the European Union but still catching up with richer Western European states after nearly half a century of living under communism.
''Poles want to be united by something innately good, something beyond their everyday lives,'' said Slawomir Kapralski, a professor at the School of Social Psychology in Warsaw.
News programmes, usually pre-occupied by Poland's volatile politics and sleaze scandals ahead of upcoming elections, have also focused nearly entirely on the late Pontiff.
Parliament held a special session today during which a video of the Pontiff's 1999 speech before the legislature was played, and speaker Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz told his fellow deputies to take heart of their late spiritual leader's words.
''In these moments, it is clear to us how far we are all from our model (the Pope) and how petty and senseless are our disputes,'' said Cimoszewicz, a moderate leftist.
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