|TOP|Poland's Catholic bishops are drawing up guidelines for pastoral care of church members in Britain and Ireland as thousands of Poles venture abroad in the wake of Poland's admission to the EU.

"We thank everyone engaged till now in this pastorate," the Warsaw-based Bishops’ Conference said in a statement after meeting at Jasna Gora.

"With the whole Polish clergy, we must take difficult pastoral steps to respond to this new wave of emigration in cooperation with local bishops' conferences."

The initiative follows the arrival of more priests to work among Polish communities in Western Europe, which have grown rapidly since the EU’s May 2004 expansion.

Speaking after the meeting, president of the Bishops' Conference president, Archbishop Jozef Michalik, said a pastoral letter would be sent to Polish Catholics, urging them to remain faithful to their spiritual roots.

"This will express our union with the great mass of Poles who've already left and are still leaving," Archbishop Michalik added.

"It's a question not just of maintaining pastoral contact with them, but of making it stronger. This is the great task of the moment."

Up to two million citizens have left Poland since May 2004, fleeing from the 18 per cent unemployment in the country and seeking career opportunities abroad, according to EU data. Up to half of these emigrants now live in Britain and Ireland, the only countries allowing full access to their labour markets.

In the midst of a continent that suffers from priest-shortage, Poland is the only country in Europe that is overflowing with priests.

|AD|Although Poland has traditionally sent missionaries to countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, Polish priests are increasingly in demand to fill up the rest of Europe, as a quarter of all young men train to become Roman Catholic priests in Europe are Polish.

However, Grazyna Sikorska, a worker at the London-based Mission, said Polish church leaders were concerned about pressure to merge Polish parishes with the English Church, and would request clarification from the English bishops.

"Polish Catholics want to preserve their own communities - the Church is often their only link with the homeland," Sikorska said.

"Many young Poles are already mature Christians, and our spirituality and culture are quite different."

The Polish Church, which has more than 2,000 missionary priests worldwide, has printed a special prayer and information book for Polish Catholics in Britain and Ireland, where at least 20 new priests have taken up work this year, and is preparing similar material for use in other countries admitting Polish workers.

However, the head of the English Church’s Department for International Relations, Bishop Crispin Hollis of Portsmouth, said he was keen to see "gradual long-term assimilation" and had made "so-called Polish parishes" part of his diocese’s pastoral plan for coming years.

The bishop added that Poles already made up a fifth of practising Catholics in his diocese's largest city, Southampton, and could "change the profile" of the English Church by doubling Mass attendance in some parishes.