Thousands attend the funeral of popular philanthropist Marek Kotanski

More than 10 thousand people accompanied the coffin yesterday of Marek Kotanski - the founder of the Markot and Monar centers for drug and alcohol addicts and shelters for the homeless - to his final resting place. Among the mourners were older women, young people, artists, politicians and even families with infants. Due to the large number of people attending the funeral, it was hard to get access to the grave and so people resorted to passing flowers over their heads. Kotanski was killed in a car crash on the morning of Sunday 18. Primate Jozef Glemp said of the deceased, "He was a person who accompanied those with a cross to bear." Immediately prior to the ceremony, the Sejm honored Kotanski with a one-minute silence. "It seems that a single Kotanski was not enough for Poles and Poland. That is why this grain had to die, so hundreds and thousands of other Poles making sacrifices for others may grow from it," said Bishop Piotr Jarecki during the sevice. Marek Kotanski was posthumously honored with one the highest medals with which a civilian can be decorated in Poland. (Gazeta Wyborcza, pp. 1, 3) M.M.