“This pandemic showed what is important to people.” The COVID-19 pandemic and collective religious practices from the perspective of the rural Catholics in Southern Poland

This paper explores the shifting terrain of contemporary lived Catholicism in Poland in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The dominant position of the Catholic Church in the Polish religious landscape remains a crucial point of reference, even given the decline in religious practice in the last thirty years. Radical changes in collective religious practices brought by the pandemic provided an opportunity to analyze the experiences of lay Catholics. Our analysis is based on 21 in-depth interviews with "strong" Catholics from small rural parishes in Southern Poland. We argue that in this group, the attachment to local parish and its power structure and continued engagement with it during the pandemic is entwined with the need for transformation of the established hierarchies and means of lay engagement.