December 01, 2005
Pope Benedict XVI has said that the Nazis' extermination camps remained "an indelible shame in the history of mankind". During the sermon of his weekly public audience on Wednesday, dedicated to an interpretation of the biblical Psalms, the German-born pope linked the laments of the Babylonian captivity of the Jewish people as expressed in Psalm 136 to the deportation of Jews to the death camps during World War II. "It is almost an anticipation of the extermination camps to which the Jewish people, in the century which we have just left behind us, were sent in an infamous operation of death, which has remained an indelible shame in the history of humanity," the pontiff said in Italian to the several thousand pilgrims and tourists gathered in St. Peter's Square. Since his election as pope in April, Benedict, repeatedly condemned the Nazi regime and recalled the tragedy of the Holocaust on several occasions. He also met with numerous Jewish groups and visited the synagogue in Cologne during a trip to Germany in August. Benedict has declared the continued improvement of relations between Catholics and Jews, following up on the efforts of his predecessor Pope John Paul II, one of the priorities of his pontificate.
