As part of the Third Republic Culture Festival, a conference "Wandering Madonnas" was held, which was attended by the Speaker of the Sejm Marek Kuchcinski.

- A political community, whether a nation or a regional community, needs an identity in order to survive and thrive over time. And every identity is rooted in history - the ancient history rather than the recent one. Without knowing our own history it is difficult to change the present and to look forward to the future without fear - said Marshal Kuchcińsk.

- Polish political identity grows out of the history of the former Polish state, the values that our ancestors tried to realize in vast areas of Europe. We reach back both to the glory of the First Republic, its victories and achievements, as well as to the uprising and war struggle to regain a sovereign and independent state. There is also no Polish political identity without Christianity, and its unique feature is the Marian cult.

The Marshal said that the dramas of the Polish nation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, during the partitions, occupations, border changes and resettlements, caused the Polish Madonnas to wander along with the Poles. Wherever Poles found themselves in the world, either of their own free will or out of compulsion - in the East and in the West - Marian shrines sprang up and Madonna were venerated. - The Subcarpathian region became home to many images of the Blessed Virgin Mary that were taken from the lost lands, from the eastern borderlands," he said.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in the conditions of the decline of the splendour of our country and numerous bloody wars, all strata of Polish society turned to the Blessed Virgin Mary, placing the Crown of Poland, their fate and hopes for the future under her protection. It was at that time that the Lvov vows of King Jan Kazimierz took place in front of the picture of Our Lady of Grace in Lvov and pilgrimages to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska to Our Lady of Weeping began. The lands of the Rzeczpospolita were marked with Marian shrines and Polish Madonnas. At that time, between 1760 and 1766, Our Lady of Jackow was declared miraculous and crowned.

Chroniclers note that the first Marian apparition took place on Polish soil as early as the 11th century. The statue of Our Lady of Jacko found its home in Przemysl, in the Subcarpathian region of Poland, in 1240. We bring to her our requests, worries and dreams - the small private ones and the great common for the nation and state.

At the end of his speech, Marek Kuchciński thanked the organizers of the Third Festival of the Polish Republic for consistently presenting the heritage of the former Republic as a source of Polish patriotism. "Without your efforts our tradition would be flawed. God bless you."