Tablet article on Polish immigration to Scotland. The Scottish government embarked on a concerted program to recruit workers from Poland a few years ago, and it’s bearing fruit:

There’s only standing room left for Mass in Polish at St Francis of Assisi Church in Aberdeen. A few hundred people pack into the pews and dozens more are crammed into the back of the church. Many of them are young, wrapped up tightly in scarves and anoraks, ready to do battle on the way home with an icy wind blowing off the North Sea.

Polish Chaplain to the Diocese of Aberdeen, Father Jozef Kolasa, is the crowd-puller. He travels widely to say Mass and hear confessions from some of the thousands of Polish people who have come to the north-east and to the Highlands of Scotland in the two years since Poland joined the EU. In their own country unemployment is around 18 per cent and wages are much lower than in the UK – teachers and social workers earn about £150 a month.

“People don’t like confessing in English so they wait for me to visit. I come here every month, so I say to them ‘Just don’t sin!’” says Fr Jozef with a smile. He says there are now an estimated 5,000 Polish people in Inverness and up to 6,000 in Aberdeen. And since he has been in Scotland only seven months himself, he understands what it’s like to struggle with a foreign language and the culture shock of a new country and new job.