Monsignor Tadeusz Kukla, in charge of pastoring Polish Roman Catholics living in England and Wales, estimates that the number of Poles in London has doubled since Poland’s accession to the EU in 2004 to 600,000. Most of these arrived last year, and thousands more are arriving each month.

He was sent over by the Polish hierarchy 30 years ago to pastor Polish students in London. Five years ago he was appointed Vicar Delegate by the Polish bishops and now operates from a 75-year-old church bought from a Protestant community in Islington, North London. He is under the authority of the Catholic bishops of England and Wales and has 30 parishes in his care.

He said that the difficulty of being precise about numbers was made worse because so many Polish incomers were not registered. But he had noted an “incredible” increase since May 2004. “It has doubled or even more,” he said. “In London we have 12 Polish Catholic churches and we are trying to open new centres. We give pastoral help but people come with all sorts of pastoral questions for the priests. Many come with their whole families and they want to know about schools. We organise talks and tell them how to live in a big city such as London.”

Many Poles end up living far from a Polish chaplaincy and so integrate into their local Catholic community: “Some go to the Anglican churches by mistake and are astonished.”

Father Kukla said that a key characteristic of the migrants, including the Poles, was their youth. Many are students or recent graduates. Congregations are now bursting with young people, all with a massive enthusiasm for faith and liturgy. English priests, more accustomed to dealing with a disaffected and cynical British youth, have been thrilled but are also struggling to cope with the demands being made on their parishes to serve as job centres, social welfare centres and youth meeting places.

They also struggle to cope with the sheer scale of the difficulties faced by the some migrants. One 21-year-old Pole, Pavel, told the Cambridge researchers that he had arrived in England through an agency after paying a fee but the contacts he was given were bogus and he ended up sleeping rough in Victoria. He was introduced to someone who said he could help him, but was robbed of all his belongings, including his ID papers. He ended up in a squat with no electricity or running water run by a Polish gang with other desperate migrants who spent their days drinking and taking drugs.

His rescue came through the Cardinal Hume Centre, a Catholic youth project in Westminster founded by the late Archbishop. After being put in touch with the authorities via the centre, his papers were replaced, he was helped with basic living requirements and he found a job as a porter.

The new arrivals are not just from the accession states. They are also from the Chinese diaspora, Africa, Latin America and South and South East Asia.

One priest was called to hospital in the early hours of the morning to pastor to a parishioner who had been badly mutilated for defaulting a loan that was secured on a family member back home. The migrant had arrived in London expecting papers, a job and a place to live. He ended up eating left-over food in the restaurant where he worked and sleeping on the floor after closing time.

In another case, a couple from Argentina worked for two months on wages of £10 a week, surviving on bread and milk.

Lows and highs

- 1535 Henry VIII declared himself Supreme Head of the Church of England. The Mass was replaced by the Book of Common Prayer and Catholic doctrine by the 39 Articles of Religion. Centuries of martyrdom and persecution followed

- A Catholic Relief Act in 1778 allowed them to own property. They were allowed to inherit and join the Army

- This heralded a revival in the 19th century, when Protestants such as John Henry Newman converted and a sudden rediscovery of its Catholic identity led to the High Church Tractarian movement in the Church of England

- Centuries of suppression, which only truly ended with the Restoration of the Hierarchy in the mid-19th century, left the English Catholic Church bereft of confidence, which only began to return under the extraordinary leadership of the late Cardinal Basil Hume, Archbishop of Westminster

- Many upper-class and prominent Anglicans were received into the fold, including Ann Widdecombe and John Gummer Many Anglican priests followed, as the Church of England began what some would describe as its long, interminable descent into schism with the ordination of women in 1994

- The row over gays may bring more conversions