Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI, from Poland and Germany, respectively, lived World War II from the depths of their own personal and family experiences. In their footsteps, Pope Francis made a visit to Auschwitz a priority.
Auschwitz was liberated on January 27, 1945. That date is marked each year as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Francis: Lord, forgiveness for so much cruelty
Francis paused to pray in silence in Roll Call Square, where prisoners were hanged and where St. Maximilian Kolbe offered his life in exchange for that of another prisoner.
After being received at the doors of the “hunger cell,” the location of the martyrdom of St. Maximilian Kolbe, by the Superior General and Provincial of the Franciscan Order of Friars Minor Conventual, he entered alone into cell 18 of the underground part of Block 11, where the Polish priest died. Hunger was one of the many forms of death penalty that existed in Auschwitz. The prisoners, chosen from the block or working group from which a prisoner had escaped, were condemned to a slow death in the camp’s hunger cells. There is now a commemorative plaque and a candle, given by St. John Paul II, in the cell of St. Maximilian Kolbe.
Upon leaving, the Pope signed the Book of Honour with the following words: “Lord, have mercy on your people, Lord, forgiveness for so much cruelty” Franciscus, 29.7.2016.
Benedict: Where was God in those days?
Pope Benedict XVI had visited 10 years before, in 2006. Among his considerations, he said:
John Paul II: War never again
Pope John Paul II visited the death camp in 1979, very soon after his election. In his native Poland, it was a place he'd been too many times, as he noted:
John Paul II quoted his predecessor, Paul VI.
Therefore I would like to repeat in this place the words that Paul VI pronounced before the United Nations Organizations:
"It is enough to remember that the blood of millions of men, numberless and unprecedented sufferings, useless slaughter and frightful ruin, are the sanction of the covenant which unites you in a solemn pledge which must change the future history of the world: No more war, war never again. It is peace, peace which must guide the destinies of peoples and of all mankind" (AAS 57, 1965, p. 881).
He concluded his address like this:
