Teen pilgrims killed in bus crash on way to shrine
A bus carrying high school students on an annual pilgrimage to Poland’s most sacred Catholic shrine collided with a truck and burst into flames today, killing 12 people.
The bus was carrying students in their final year of high school from the north-eastern city of Bialystok to Czestochowa in southern Poland, the home of the renowned Jasna Gora shrine, said Zlotka Korzeniewska, the school principal.
About 60 people were on board when the bus hit a truck head-on, just 20 miles into their trip, said Jacek Dobrzynski, a spokesman for Bialystok police. The force of the impact spun the bus around and caused it to catch fire, Dobrzynski said.
Most of the 12 people killed were students, said Boguslaw Hryniewicki, a fire department spokesman.
Korzeniewska said two of the teachers accompanying them were seriously injured. Dobrzynski said more than 20 passengers overall were taken to hospital.
Czestochowa, a 14th century monastery, attracts millions of pilgrims every year, some of them walking hundreds of miles, others taking buses or trains to pray before the revered painting of the Black Madonna.
Many credit the Polish triumph over Swedish invaders at Czestochowa 350 years ago to the miraculous power of the painting, a Byzantine style image that legend says was painted by St. Luke the Evangelist.
The late Pope John Paul II visited the monastery six times in the 27 years of his Papacy, and the icon was given a new covering in August that included gold crowns donated by the Polish-born Pontiff, as well as amber and diamonds.
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