Polish prosecutors have charged a Ukrainian man with murder, attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm. The charges, which carry a possible life sentence, follow an attack on Thursday, September 24, 2026, in which a knife-wielding assailant killed a priest and wounded four other people at a 17th-century Benedictine abbey in southeastern Poland.
Psychiatric experts found the suspect, identified under Polish privacy rules as Ihor M., was showing acute psychotic symptoms that prevented him from being questioned. A court ordered him held for three months in a secure hospital ward. Reporting on those symptoms, as of Sept. 26, said he requires antipsychotic treatment.
Police arrested a 31-year-old Ukrainian man at the scene at the Benedictine Sisters’ abbey on Benedyktyńska Street in the town of Jarosław, in the Podkarpackie, or Subcarpathian, region. An alert reached officers in the region at about 9:30 a.m., warning that a Ukrainian national was attacking men with a knife inside the grounds of the abbey.
Five people were stabbed in all — four men and one woman. Three of those attacked were priests and two were laypeople. Police said every wounded victim was hospitalized, some with serious injuries.
Fr. Stanisław Zbojnowicz, a clergyman, later died of his wounds at age 67. He was buried Tuesday, Sept. 29. Spokespeople for the police and prosecutors confirmed one victim had died but would not identify the person. Four victims were still hospitalized, Prosecutors said, with two of them in critical, life-threatening condition.
Reports described a second priest, Fr. Marek Pieńkowski, as being in serious condition. Authorities corrected earlier accounts that he too had died. He remained hospitalized in serious but stable condition.
How the Attack Unfolded
A kitchen inside the abbey complex was the man’s first stop, according to prosecutors, and he picked up a knife there. Victims were first encountered in that part of the building. Polish outlets said a priest was knifed in the café next door.
The church itself came next, where confessions were being heard and worshippers were arriving for a 10 a.m. Mass; there he attacked two more priests. Witnesses put the blade at some 80 centimeters long and said people took cover inside confessionals as the assault unfolded.
According to those witness accounts, the priest who died tried to halt the attacker and threw himself at him. Polish television station TVN heard from one woman who had come for Mass; she put the assailant at about 30 years old and said he struck a priest in the neck artery, after which the priest fell to the ground.
The Benedictine superior, Sister Barbara Dendor, said no one in the community knew the man.
Fire engines and officers stood outside the monastery in images taken at the scene, and its entrance had been sealed off. Prosecutors from the regional and district offices traveled to the site.
Questions About the Suspect
The suspect had come from Germany overnight, Prosecutors said, and he was heading east toward the Korczowa crossing into Ukraine. Ukraine’s Ambassador to Poland Vasyl Bodnar said the man was refused entry into Ukraine at the border because he lacked the necessary vehicle insurance, and that he lived in Germany. He then traveled to the abbey.
Polish media reported that Ihor M. previously served in Ukraine’s armed forces, that he reportedly fought in Ukraine and that he held two passports. Revenge has been floated as a possible motive. The investigation is ongoing.
Terrorism struck Jarosław Mayor Marcin Nazarewicz as the probable explanation in the first hours, and municipal facilities saw security stepped up. Schools in the town got advice to keep children indoors. Prosecutors have stopped short of treating the case as terrorism, and they have pointed to no evidence of an ideological or religious motive.
Questioning of the man in custody had still not taken place as of Thursday afternoon, September 24, and investigators had taken blood samples to test him for alcohol and drugs. Officers were interviewing witnesses at the scene, examining the site and working to piece together exactly what had happened, police spokeswoman Anna Długosz said.
The most basic question — why — remains unanswered.
Warsaw and Kyiv Respond
The case turned political within hours, and the government and the opposition sounded strikingly similar in their first responses, each demanding a fast investigation and a harsh sentence. On X, Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote that Polish police had the killer in hand and that the perpetrator was a Ukrainian citizen. He added that he shared the grief of the victims’ relatives after the brutal attack.
“He will be punished with the full severity of Polish law,” Tusk wrote.
Jarosław Kaczyński, leader of the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) party, pressed for a full accounting of the case, including the circumstances of the suspect’s stay in Poland and whether he had previously drawn the attention of the authorities.
In Kyiv, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the killing at the Benedictine Sisters’ abbey and said it had been committed by a Ukrainian citizen. “We are shaken by this evil,” he wrote on social media. Zelenskyy condemned the Sept. 24 attack as a “horrific crime” and said the perpetrator must “bear full responsibility in accordance with the law.”
Bodnar said on Sept. 28 that he believed the attack was not nationally motivated.
Polish Bishop Krzysztof Zadarko spoke at a Warsaw press conference on Sept. 25, ahead of the 112th World Day of Migrants and Refugees, warning against collective blame. “We don’t know all the details,” he said, adding, “but shifting the blame from one person onto an entire society, an entire ethnic or national group, is an abuse.”
A Wounded Priest Returns
Another of the wounded priests, Fr. Adrian Mantykiewicz, returned to celebrate Mass on Sept. 26. “Whatever happened, the evil that took place here in our abbey, we must overcome with goodness, love and forgiveness,” he told worshippers.
In the same Mass, he asked worshippers not to blame the nation from which the perpetrator comes, and said he forgave the suspect, asking people to pray for him. “The evil was committed by a specific person who is responsible for his actions,” he said, and he asked people to pray that the suspect “may receive the grace of conversion.”
Violence of this kind is unusual in Poland, one of the most Catholic countries in Europe, where stabbings are extremely rare and rarer still at religious sites. The abbey stands roughly 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the Ukrainian border, in a region shaped by the war next door.
Poland is a close ally of Ukraine and has given shelter to hundreds of thousands of people who fled Russia’s invasion, though frictions have surfaced in recent months. The country belongs to both NATO and the European Union, sits on the alliance’s eastern flank, and serves as the main transit point for Western military and humanitarian support bound for Kyiv.
Polish officials have said sabotage orchestrated by Russia is increasing in the country during a fifth year of war next door. Earlier in September, Tusk cautioned that Poland could feel the consequences if Russia escalates its strikes on Ukraine over the weeks ahead.
