16 May, 2006
Pope Benedict XVI will honor the victims of the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau when he visits later this month, including a Roman Catholic priest made saint by John Paul II for giving up his life for another inmate, Associated Press (AP) quotes a Catholic Church official as saying. Benedict will pay a visit to the former camp, where the Nazis killed some 1.1 million people - most of them Jews-, on the last day of his May 25-28 visit to Poland. Benedict will deliver a speech in Italian to survivors and members of the Jewish community in Poland, Stanislaw Lubaszka told AP. A prayer for peace will be made in Benedict's native German to stress the symbolism of his visit to a place where the language brings ominous associations. "The Germans set up the camp so there is a historic link, but the appeal for peace goes to the entire world," Lubaszka told AP. Benedict will also pray in the cell where the Nazis killed the Polish priest Maximilian Kolbe after he volunteered to give up his life in place of fellow inmate Franciszek Gajowniczek because he was the father of a family. Pope John Paul II made Kolbe a saint in 1982; Gajowniczek died in 1995. Benedict will also light the candle placed in the cell by Pope John Paul II during his visit in 1979. He will then meet with Carmelite nuns who moved their nunnery from the camp to a site nearby at the urging of John Paul II in 1993. The Jewish community had argued that the cross on their nunnery harmed the memory of the camp's Jewish victims.
