Child’s Religious Identity in Foster Care

Abstract

Taking into account the religious aspect in child-rearing is not exclusive to parental education, neither are only children growing up in their natural family environments entitled to the right to preserve their religious identity. Also children in foster care are equally entitled to it. Is, however, the right actually respected in Poland? Can, for example, two thirteen-year-old Muslims from Turkey, who are detained at the Central Station in Warsaw after having crossed the border illegally, request placement in a foster family or institution in which they are not required to eat pork, where they can fast in the month of Ramadan and study the Quran? Can Catholic parents, who have been deprived of parental custody, demand that their four-year-old child, who is placed in a family-type children’s home run by a religiously indifferent couple, attend weekly Mass and get acquainted with the Bible? This article attempts to address the abovementioned questions.