(OSV News) — Six people were killed and over a dozen wounded in Poland Nov.

7 when a gunman opened fire at random passersby in Kraków’s Main Market Square, turning one of Europe’s best-known pilgrimage and peaceful tourist destinations into a scene of terror.

Faced with horror unfolding just meters from his residence, the city’s cardinal urged his countrymen to stand together amid “terrible” violence.

“We do not want to be, we cannot be, and we are simply unable to be indifferent at a time like this.

We want, we need, and we must stand together,” Cardinal Grzegorz Rys wrote from the historic Archbishops’ Palace of Kraków, located roughly 260 feet from the Main Market Square.

7 statement, Cardinal Rys said that anyone could have been walking through the square when the shooting began, passing “through places where bullets had struck unsuspecting, innocent bystanders.” Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda of Gdansk, president of the Polish bishops’ conference, also expressed shock at the violence.

“I stand in spiritual solidarity with all those who suffered in this exceptionally brutal act and support them with my prayers,” he said.

Scenes unimaginable for a peaceful, tourist city Horrific accounts of witnesses of the tragedy started being published soon after the event, in a nation mostly spared of such violent terror events and considered one of the most peaceful places in Europe.

“He got out of the car and started shooting at people.

He was firing at the outdoor cafe tables, where people were sitting and drinking coffee,” Dominik Bartelak, of Cafe Una on the Main Market Square, told OSV News.

“Bodies were lying near our cafe.

A woman was killed near St.

Mary’s Basilica.” He added, “A helicopter landed on the Small Market Square, and someone was being resuscitated right next to us.” The shooting started on the corner of the main square where Bartelak’s cafe is located.

“If someone had been sitting in the chair by our cafe window, they would have been hit.

A bullet went through,” Bartelak said.

When he spoke to OSV News, Bartelak was still inside his cafe, comforting shaken employees and offering hot tea to police officers working at the scene.

Reacting to the tragedy, Bishop Artur Wazny of Sosnowiec wrote on X: “I am thinking of those whose lives were taken today with a brutality incomprehensible to the human heart,” and the families for whom “the cruelest reality is that the world will keep turning — only now, it will go on without someone who was irreplaceable.” Suspect opened fire at random on passersby The attack began shortly after 3 p.m., when a man drove into the Main Market Square from the direction of Slawkowska Street and opened fire....