(OSV News) – Celebrating 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the Order of Malta in Poland is inviting Polish Americans to permanently inscribe the names of their ancestors on a wall inside an iconic Kraków church to serve two purposes: memory and charity.
The names engraved on a wall at St. Maximilian Kolbe Church in Kraków will honor Poles who left their homeland, built new lives in the United States and passed their faith, culture and family traditions on to later generations. The fundraising effort is aimed at supporting the Maltese Center for Assistance to Disabled Children and Their Families, operated by the Foundation of the Order of Malta in Kraków.
The project also marks the 100th anniversary of the 1926 Polish Declarations of Admiration and Friendship for the United States – a collection of 111 volumes of signatures in the Library of Congress, presented in 1926 to President Calvin Coolidge to commemorate the 150th anniversary of U.S. independence and to acknowledge American participation and aid to Poland during World War I.
For Vanessa O'Brien, chair of the Wall of Remembrance Committee, the idea emerged only after several other approaches failed to raise the $1 million needed for the center to operate.
After a visit to the Kraków church with Fr. Andrzej Kopicz, the parish's pastor, the idea began to take shape – 1,000 names engraved on the wall, each coming with a $1,000 donation to help children under the care of the Maltese center.
Fr. Kopicz told OSV News that the wall reflects what he sees as the deepest elements of the Polish immigrant experience: "faith, family, work, courage, longing for the homeland and responsibility for the next generations."
Polish immigrants to the U.S. often left with little material wealth, he said, but carried their faith, language, traditions, hope and love for Poland with them.
"The Wall of Remembrance allows this history to take on a visible, lasting form," Fr. Kopicz told OSV News. "It is not only about writing a surname on stone or bronze. It is about preserving the names of specific people – ancestors, parents, grandparents, great-grandparents – in a place of prayer and gratitude."
The location adds another layer to the project. The church was consecrated by St. John Paul II in 1983 and Fr. Kopicz sees the connection as more than historical.
"Christian remembrance is not only looking at the past," he said. "It is gratefully accepting an inheritance and asking what we will do with that inheritance today." The answer, in this case, is meant to be concrete help for children and families. "We do not want remembrance to stop at stone, bronze or the inscription of a name," Fr. Kopicz told OSV News. "We want remembrance to become mercy."
The campaign has raised $28,552 during a "soft" launch, O'Brien told OSV News. About 980 names remain available. "We don't reserve names," O'Brien said. "It is generally on a first-come, first-served basis." The Wall of Remembrance would be placed on a wall next to the church's altar of St. John the Baptist.
The Maltese Center that the campaign aims to help sustain has operated for more than two decades, providing therapy, rehabilitation, education and specialist support to children with disabilities and their families. Today, its biggest challenge is ensuring that the existing center can continue serving families for years to come, said Ewa Reczek, director of the center.
A Dec. 30, 2025, agreement gave the Polish branch of the Order of Malta a 99-year right to use the land on which the center stands and formally regulated the ownership of the building. The arrangement also created long-term financial obligations to the city of Kraków.
"We do not want and cannot cover these obligations at the expense of therapy, specialists' salaries, education or daily support for families," Reczek told OSV News. "Every dime taken away from current operations would mean less help for children."
The campaign is intended to help prevent that choice. About one-third of the planned funds would go toward obligations connected with the property. Another third would support improvements to therapy and rehabilitation spaces. The remainder would support the development of educational and therapeutic methods, as well as plans to expand the center and acquire an adjacent plot of land.
Among the planned projects is a roughly 2,340-square-feet sensory and therapeutic garden, designed as an outdoor therapy space with accessible paths, sensory trails, plants and herbs, tactile and sound elements and adaptive equipment, including a swing with a platform for wheelchairs.
The center also plans to strengthen therapeutic programs and specialist training in areas including alternative and augmentative communication, sensory integration, feeding therapy, physiotherapy and work with children on the autism spectrum.
For Reczek, the reason such support matters can be seen in the experience of the children who come through the center.
Ala, 5, has autism and moderate intellectual disability. Before coming to the center, she was removed from a therapeutic preschool because of severe self-injurious behavior. Her mother developed severe anxiety as the family struggled to find a place that could understand and support their daughter.
When Ala first arrived, her father brought her attached to a harness and leash because he feared she might hurt herself. The center developed an individual program combining psychological, speech, educational and sensory-integration therapy. Her parents received communication training, while her mother was offered individual psychotherapy.
Over time, Ala's self-injurious behavior significantly decreased. She developed a relationship with her teacher and began communicating her needs more effectively. At first, she relied on gestures and a communication book. Eventually, words began to appear.
For Reczek, the transformation was not one dramatic breakthrough but "hundreds of small steps" – entering a room calmly, making a first gesture, saying a first word, forming a first relationship and reaching a point where the family no longer had to live in constant fear.
That is the connection the Wall of Remembrance is designed to make between Polish ancestors of Americans and the actual reality of families in need in their country of origin.
"Engraving the name of a loved one which passes directly to another in need," O'Brien said, is "the best spiritual return on investment I have seen in a long time," mentioning 42,000 children that were under the care of the Maltese center for the last two decades.
Adam Zajac of the Association of the Polish Knights of Malta in Kraków and coordinator of the Wall of Remembrance project, stressed that "the success of many Polish-American families has names. It has the names of people without whose courage, work and sacrifices their descendants would not have their position in an American society today."
The wall, he said, gives families a way to preserve those names and family histories through a gesture of gratitude.
"One hundred years ago, Poland thanked America," Zajac told OSV News. "Today, the descendants of Polish immigrants can thank their ancestors and at the same time pass on the good and opportunity their families received in America."
