You see, some time ago that paty played on polish xenophobia and "catholic valuse" to gather more votes, together with certain cleric owned radio which spewd riddiculous claims about Jews coming into Poland to steal jobs, goverment selling off the polish soil and such other "facts". Most of those people, old and young do not even try to seek other information sources becouse, they are mainipulated of course. Other party played on other people fears of living in catholic theocratic state. Given how many catholics behave here, they did not evertly exaggerate.
Most of polish citizens live in a backwater state mentality. Thanks to the EU funds many have changed. Those people survived culture shock in less than a decade and also gained vast influence contrary to the previous period. Today, you can make an altar in the middle of the patomorphology lab and lose a job becouse you were not subscribed to the Solidarity and do not regulary walk to the church. It is a bit better now than in the '90s, but still backwardness and superstitions rule in the society. People tend to believe more and more to the self appointed "prophets" and bigots than reasonable explanations. They were promised Western utopia only to be harshly awaken in the real world, which do no not work with imagination only.
There is strong cataholicism mixed with nationalism in Poland. That party played with it. Those people call themselves pro life, and want to bring back the death penalty, which given polish justice system is not a good idea. They shame infertile womens, would gladly put them in prisons becouse with treatments they give birth to the abominations - becouse they think that "in vitros" are those dificient childrens with genetical dieseases, and meddle with that with the gods plan. Would chase or kill Jews becouse they bought everything just to humiliate poles and steal for themsleves.
They whipped ordinary people into frenzy so they morals and logic are clouded and suppressed enough to easily manipulate them.
And every who think otherwise is branded a heretic, traitor and thief. People run from Poland becouse of that.
It is side which you do not see at first sight, neatly covered by recently buil facades.
It is Poland. Here people think that jesus was a catholic not a jew and vote as priests say during masses. Clerelgy has a considerable reach among people here. And becouse a pole once was chosen as a pope, most of society went crazy from being proud, quite literaly. They treat it as some kind of sign that Poland is special, mixing that with current propaganda realtive to the circus that happened on our border in Ukraine and resurging myth of polish mesianism with religious-nationalist press and radio spewing idiocies that most of the people in the country believe in. And mainstream population do not even think about Vatican or pope, becouse there is only one true polish Pope, dead and eternaly living saint John Paul the Second. They have gotten a new jesus.
tl;dr: Poland is happening
This is not exaggerating. Not a tiny bit. The second part is especially true. In school (at least later on it's less apparent, thankfully, as internet is a thing) you can be a social outcast simply because you're not going to church as often as other people. Speaking of school, I was taught in it that Hello Kitty is essentially Satan (or actually that every cartoon (or whatever, as long as it's not Bible cartoon) is Satan), gays should be castrated or killed in concentration camps(not even joking), essentially all fantasy/sci-fic/whatever that's not Bible should be burned, Poland is the choosen nation (you can imagine how hard some people flipped out when they learned the Benedict XVI was Luftwaffenhelfer), medicine is wrong and only Jesus can heal people (again, not even joking), the certain cleric owned television (part of the same group as the certain cleric owned radio) is the only true one, you go to Hell for
literally everything, etc, etc. Also got a bunch of directives to influence my parents (tell them they should vote XYZ, etc). Any tries to argue resulted in fit of rage and usually landed people in principals office (thankfully, she wasn't that bad and didin't actually do much which in this case is the best thing she could do). Also, you could not pass the class simply because the priest/catechist said so.
Welcome to Poland. Thankfully things are better in bigger cities, but eh.
Are there 'hordes' of them? Don't think so. Of course, in a destination like Częstochowa(where I assume Kot lives), the city itself being little more than a monument to a suppoused miracle during a Swedish siege, around which monument are built countless hotels, hostels, pilgrim's shelters, rosary dealers... But outside of that, I've met with no such behaviour in the Western part, where I live. Only saw processions happen during Corpus Christi and around Easter time, which I consider understandable.
Nope, not Częstochowa.
Świynto Anna, and I don't even live that close, few kilometers away. And yes, there are hordes of them. Right now a bunch of choirboys (whatever you call them, I don't know the English word but the translation seems silly) with priests is passing next to my house every hour or so.