Prosecutors have charged a 31-year-old Ukrainian man with murder, attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm over a knife attack at a 17th-century Benedictine abbey in southeastern Poland that killed a priest and wounded four other people on Thursday, September 24, 2026. A Polish court ordered him held in custody.

Prosecutors filed the charges September 28. Polish media named the suspect as Ihor M., 31. Police arrested him at the scene on the day of the attack.

A call came in at about 9:30 a.m. reporting that a Ukrainian national was attacking men with a knife on the grounds of the Benedictine Sisters’ abbey on Benedyktyńska Street in the town of Jarosław, according to Police in the Podkarpackie, or Subcarpathian, region.

The attacker stabbed five people in all — four men and one woman. Police said every wounded victim was hospitalized, some with serious injuries. Three of those attacked were priests, and two were laypeople.

Fr. Stanisław Zbojnowicz, one of the clergymen, later died of his wounds. Spokespeople for the police and prosecutors confirmed one victim had died but would not identify the person. Zbojnowicz had been rector of the Church of St Nicholas the Bishop and of Jarosław Abbey since 2010. His funeral was set for September 29.

Kitchen, Cafe and Church

A kitchen inside the abbey complex was the man’s first stop, and he picked up a knife there, according to prosecutors. That part of the building saw the earliest encounters with victims. Polish outlets said a priest was knifed in the cafe next door.

He then pushed into the church itself, attacking two more priests where confessions were being heard and worshippers were arriving for a 10 a.m. Mass.

Witnesses put the blade at some 80 centimeters long and said people took cover inside confessionals. According to those witness accounts, the priest who died tried to halt the attacker and threw himself at him.

A priest was struck in the neck artery by the assailant, whom she put at about 30 years old, and fell to the ground, one woman who had come for Mass told Polish television station TVN.

Nobody in the community knew the man, said Sister Barbara Dendor, the Benedictine superior.

Suspect Came From Germany

The suspect had come in from Germany overnight and was heading east toward the Korczowa crossing into Ukraine, Prosecutors said.

Vasyl Bodnar, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, said the man lived in Germany and was refused entry into Ukraine because he lacked the necessary vehicle insurance, after which he traveled to the abbey. Bodnar also said he believed the attack was not nationally motivated.

Psychiatric experts who examined the man found he was experiencing symptoms of an acute psychotic disorder and was unable to take part in legal proceedings at the time of the examination, according to Polish media cited September 28. A separate report said he requires antipsychotic treatment.

Investigators had not yet questioned the man in custody as of Thursday afternoon, September 24, and 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, said police spokeswoman Anna Długosz.

Authorities corrected earlier accounts that a second priest, Fr. Marek Pieńkowski, had also died. He was reported to be in serious condition.

Two men remained hospitalized in serious condition as of September 28, one of them Pieńkowski, head of the Council of the Foundation for Family Pastoral Ministry, who had worked assisting Ukrainian refugees.

Terrorism was the probable explanation in the first hours for Jarosław Mayor Marcin Nazarewicz, and municipal facilities got stepped-up security. Schools in the town received advice to keep children indoors. Prosecutors have stopped short of treating the case as terrorism, and no evidence of an ideological or religious motive has been pointed to.

The regional and district offices sent Prosecutors to the site. Fire engines and officers appeared outside the monastery in images from the scene, its entrance sealed off.

Political Reaction in Warsaw

The killer was in the hands of Polish police, and the perpetrator was a Ukrainian citizen, Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X. 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.

The first responses from the government and the opposition were strikingly similar in demanding a fast investigation and a harsh sentence.

Appeals Against Collective Blame

Polish Bishop Krzysztof Zadarko warned September 25 against collective blame at a Warsaw press conference. “We don’t know all the details,” he said, “but shifting the blame from one person onto an entire society, an entire ethnic or national group, is an abuse.”

A silent march was held near the monastery on September 26, preceded by a Mass. Fr. Adrian Mantykiewicz, a priest wounded in the attack, said in his homily at that Mass: “From this place, as a disciple of Jesus Christ, I want to say very clearly, in my own name, in the name of Fr Marek and in the name of Fr Stanisław: we forgive!”

Polish media reported that Fr. Adrian returned to celebrate Mass with bandages on his head and hand. “I would also like to ask you not to blame the nation from which the perpetrator comes,” he told worshippers, adding, “The evil was committed by a specific person who is responsible for his actions.”

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.

A close ally of Ukraine, Poland has given shelter to hundreds of thousands of people who fled Russia’s invasion, and frictions have surfaced in recent months. Poland 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.