Rome - Pope Francis will visit Auschwitz during a trip to Poland later this year, making him the third head of the Catholic Church to make a pilgrimage to the infamous death camp, the Vatican announced on Saturday.
According to a draft itinerary published by Vatican Radio, Francis will spend part of July twenty ninth, the third day of a five day trip timed to coincide with World Youth Day, at the site where 1.1 million Jews and seventy thousand Poles, among others, were exterminated by the Germans.
Francis will be in the southern Polish city of Krakow in July for an international jamboree of Catholic youth. Auschwitz, which is the German name for the Polish town of Oswiecim where the camp is located, is about 65 km (40.39 miles) from Krakow.
Both of Francis’ predecessors, Pope Benedict, a German, and Pope John Paul, a Pole, visited Auschwitz during their pontificates.
The current Pontiff, who hails from Argentina, visited Rome’s synagogue earlier this month and said the Holocaust, in which some 6 million Jews were killed, should remind everyone of the need for the “maximum vigilance” in the defense of human rights.
Meanwhile, in December, the church under Francis issued a landmark document asserting that Catholics should not try to convert Jews and should work with them to fight anti-Semitism. This new stance became public policy shortly after the Episcopate declared anti-Semitism a sin, winning strong praise from the country’s chief rabbi.
In October Radio Poland reported that he local branch of the Church had issued a pastoral letter asserting that “anti-Semitism and anti-Judaism are sins against the love of thy neighbor” and that “Christian- Jewish dialogue must never be treated as ‘the religious hobby,’” but rather “should increasingly become part of the mainstream of pastoral work.”
Speaking at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial museum in Jerusalem two years ago, Francis compared the Holocaust to paganism and expressed shame in “what man, created in [God’s] own image and likeness, was capable of doing.”
Speaking in the presence of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then-President Shimon Peres and Holocaust survivor Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau – the former chief rabbi – Francis further beseeched God to “grant us the grace to be ashamed of what we men have done.” He added that the Nazi genocide was “massive idolatry” that must never happen again.
“The Father knew the risk of freedom, he knew that his children could be lost, yet perhaps not even the Father could imagine so great a fall, so profound an abyss,” he mourned.
Addressing mankind collectively as the biblical Adam, the pontiff asked “who led you to presume that you are the master of good and evil?”
“Who convinced you that you were God? Not only did you torture and kill your brothers and sisters, but you sacrificed them to yourself, because you made yourself a god. Today, in this place, we hear once more the voice of God: ‘Adam, where are you?’” “Hear Lord and have mercy,” Francis intoned. “We have sinned against you.
Several months prior to that statement, a close Jewish friend of the Pope was cited in media reports that Francis intended to open the Vatican archives to investigate the actions of his predecessor, Pius XII, during the Holocaust.
Jewish groups have criticized Pius – who is currently being considered for canonization – for failing to speak up against the persecution of Jews during the Second World War.
Francis has long maintained close relations with the Jewish community, especially during his time as a Cardinal in Argentina, even going so far as to members of that faith during his Papal inauguration.
“It will be the first visit of a non-European Pope to Auschwitz signalling the importance of the memory of Auschwitz not only for Europeans, but to the global Catholic Church,” said Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the President of the Conference of European Rabbis.
