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| Pope to recall Europe's murdered Jews at Auschwitz
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Photo: AFP Copyright 2006
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WARSAW (AFP) --- Pope Benedict XVI, once an unwilling member of Hitler Youth, will mark the most solemn moment of a pilgrimage to Poland when he visits Auschwitz on Sunday to pray for its more than one million victims.
The 79-year-old pontiff will leave the Nazi death camp visit to the last day of an emotional four-day visit, his second foreign trip since succeeding the late pope John Paul II last year.
While the visit will effectively be a tribute to John Paul II and the intense Catholicism he inspired in his native land, Benedict's hours at Auschwitz will hold a deeply personal significance for the German pontiff.
Born in the Bavarian town of Marktl am Inn in 1927, he grew up during
Hitler's rise to power, and the Nazi leader's subsequent invasion of
neighbouring Poland.
The pope has made no secret of his past in wartime Germany, saying he was
an unwilling participant in Adolf Hitler's youth movement which he joined at
the age of 14.
Later in the war, he served in an anti-aircraft unit before deserting the
German army.
Friend of the Jews
His pilgrimage to Auschwitz is in keeping with his pledge to make closer
ties with the Jewish faith a priority of his pontificate, something he has
already underscored by visiting the Cologne synagogue during his first foreign
trip as pope last August.
There, he spoke of the pain and suffering caused by Hitler's "insane racist
ideology", a system he said was eventually responsible for giving his life a
new spiritual direction.
"The Nazi regime told us: in the new Germany there will no longer be any
priests, look for another profession. The brutality of the system, its totally
inhuman face, turned me instead to the right path," Benedict told a meeting of
Catholic youth from the Rome area last month.
The death camp visit is loaded with significance in that it reflects the
long and difficult process of reconciliation between Poland and Germany after
the painful wartime period.
Difficult history
The point was not lost on both countries' Vatican embassies, which
sponsored a meeting this month examining the implications of a German pope
succeeding a Polish pope.
The two popes, the embassies said in a statement, "lived through the
atrocities of the war, seeing them from different perspectives. After the war,
both were inspired by the same spirit to build a peaceful world based on
reciprocal reconciliation in accordance with the teaching of the Gospel."
"I express the hope, shared by men and women of good will everywhere, that
this century will see our world emerge from the web of conflict and violence,
and sow the seeds for a future of reconciliation, justice and peace," Benedict
told members of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wiesenthal Centre last November -- a
sentiment he is likely to reiterate in the grim surroundings of Auschwitz on
Sunday.
Benedict visited Auschwitz once before, in 1979 when, as the archbishop of
Munich, he accompanied John Paul II to what he called "these horrific fields
of death".
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