Polish prosecutors have drawn up charges of murder, attempted murder and causing grievous bodily harm against a 31-year-old Ukrainian man over a knife attack at a 17th-century Benedictine abbey in southeastern Poland that killed a priest and wounded four other people on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026. A Polish court on Sept. 26 ordered him held for three months, in a secure psychiatric ward.

As of Oct. 1, prosecutors had not been able to formally present the charges to him because of severe psychotic symptoms, Euronews reported. 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 served as a confessor at the Church of St. Nicholas the Bishop and Jarosław Abbey since 2010. His funeral was held Sept. 29 in his home parish of Grzęska, where he was buried.

Kitchen, Cafe and Church

The man went first to a kitchen inside the abbey complex and 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.

The Benedictine superior put the blade at some 80 centimeters long, and witnesses 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.

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

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 Sept. 28. A separate report said he requires antipsychotic treatment. A new psychiatric opinion found only a slight and unstable improvement, and he still could not be questioned as of Oct. 1.

Investigators had not yet questioned the man in custody as of Thursday afternoon, Sept. 24, and had taken blood samples to test him for alcohol and drugs, prosecutor Bożena Harasz-Wołoszyn said. Officers were interviewing witnesses at the scene, examining the site and working to piece together exactly what had happened.

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

Two of the most seriously injured remained hospitalized as of Oct. 1, one of them Pieńkowski, head of the Council of the Foundation for Family Pastoral Ministry, who had worked assisting Ukrainian refugees.

In the first hours, Jarosław Mayor Marcin Nazarewicz called terrorism the probable explanation, 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.

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

Political Reaction in Warsaw

Prime Minister Donald Tusk wrote on X that the killer was in the hands of Polish police 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.

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 Sept. 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 Sept. 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 a bandage on his head. “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.