Police were kicked out of a church in Calgary over Easter weekend, with a pastor calling them “Nazis,” after responding to a call related to COVID-19 concerns.
Pastor Artur Pawlowski of The Fortress (Cave) of Adullam congregation in Canada recorded a video Saturday in which he called the local authorities “Nazis,” “gestapo” and “communists” while demanding they leave the church and not return unless they had a warrant.
“I grew up under communism and my grandparents lived under the Nazis,” said Pawlowski. “My family escaped the communists in Poland and first went to Greece and then to Canada to get away from it. There were millions of Jewish people murdered in Poland including at Auschwitz.”
Pawlowski told the Toronto Sun that he drew the line with guns in his church.
“This is a place for worship and no place for weapons,” he said. “We have people praying here. They were scaring the kids. This was Passover. This is Easter.”
Calgary Police said there was “concern” that Pawlowski and his congregation “were not adhering to the government’s COVID-19 public health orders.”
“The organizer of the gathering was uncooperative with the health inspector, and repeatedly raised his voice asking all parties to leave the premises, which they did approximately one minute after entry and in a peaceful manner,” Calgary Police said in a statement, according to the Sun.
“No tickets were issued at the time and it will be up to our partner agencies to determine subsequent enforcement activity in response to this situation.”
Pawlowski has received numerous tickets during the COVID-19 pandemic, the newspaper reported.