Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses how religious temporalities are used to reinforce Kraków's religious heritage. Reenactment and actualization of the Christ's Passion not only create a temporality affecting the faithful, but also reveal universal and timeless values ascribed to the city's heritage.

Paper long abstract:

The Salesian Passion Play is performed in the congregation's house in Kraków several times during the Lent and is attended by around two thousand people. It forms a part of the Roman Catholic heritage, but by its participants it is described also as Kraków's heritage, constituting - for dozens years now - one of many religious attractions in the city.

The relation of the religious performance with city's heritage is strengthened by the Roman Catholic image of Kraków, which is perceived as "Pope's city", a pilgrimage centre (Niedźwiedź 2017). From such perspective Kraków's heritage appears as thoroughly permeated by Roman Catholicism. The Salesian play contributes to this image promoting and preserving values presented as common, stemming from the universality of the story of Christ.

In the Salesian congregation's house visitors each year are presented a different scenario organized around Christ's Passion which refers to the problems of the contemporary world. Evangelical story is reenacted, reframed and reinterpreted in multiple ways, creating its own temporality with its own values exceeding worldly time. Religious ritual, and consequently a religious story, is repeated, replicated (see Bielo 2016) and reappears in performative againness (see Schneider 2011). Passion play organizes heritage's timeline. It sets religious heritage goals (i.e. preserving Roman Catholic values and emphasizing certain universalism of the Christ's Passion) in the present and for the future through pointing out to their timeless validity. Consequently, in some aspects religious heritage might be perceived as ahistorical and framed in a different temporality