Posted on 05/28/2006 11:36:52 AM PDT by lizol
German-born Benedict visits Auschwitz
By VICTOR L. SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer
OSWIECIM, Poland - German-born Pope Benedict XVI, walking solemnly with his hands clasped, visited the Auschwitz concentration camp Sunday, passing alone under its infamous gate — a solitary figure in white.
Benedict's black-clad entourage kept its distance as he walked under the gate's notorious words: "Arbeit Macht Frei," or "Work Sets You Free."
Other than a brief greeting to the local bishop, Benedict kept silent, his lips moving in prayer and the wind tossing his white hair as he stopped for a full minute before the Wall of Death, where the Nazis killed thousands of prisoners.
Then he was handed a lighted candle, which he placed before the wall.
Benedict then moved to the monument at the neighboring Birkenau camp, praying under a light rain before plaques in the languages of the different nationalities who died there. As he prayed, a light rain stopped and a brilliant rainbow arched over the camp.
The Nazi occupiers who built the camp near the town of Oswiecim — Auschwitz in German — killed as many as 1.5 million people there, most of them Jews. Others included Poles, Roma — or Gypsies, Soviet prisoners of war and political opponents of the Nazis.
At the Wall of death, a line of 32 elderly camp survivors awaited Benedict, most of them Catholic. He moved slowly down the line, stopping to talk with each, taking one woman's face in his hands and kissing one of the men on both cheeks.
Benedict then visited the dark cell in the basement of one of the buildings, the place where St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish Franciscan friar, was executed after voluntarily taking the place of a condemned prisoner with a large family in 1941. Kolbe was canonized by John Paul II in 1982.
Benedict stopped to pray again in the cell, standing before a candle placed there by John Paul II during his 1979 visit.
The visit, by a pope who was enrolled unwillingly in the Hitler Youth and drafted into the German army, is heavy with significance for Catholic-Jewish relations, a favorite theme for Benedict and predecessor John Paul II.
This was the third time Benedict has visited Auschwitz and the neighboring camp at Birkenau. The first was in 1979, when he accompanied John Paul, and in 1980, when he came with a group of German bishops while he was archbishop of Munich.
The visit to Auschwitz was the last stop on a four-day trip to Poland, during which Benedict has urged Poles to serve as a beacon of faith in a mostly secular Europe.
Earlier, he urged 900,000 singing, clapping Poles gathered in a rain-soaked field to share their faith with other countries, saying it was the best way to honor their beloved John Paul.
The enormous, exuberant crowd chanted "Benedetto! Benedetto!" and sang "Sto Lat," or "A Hundred Years," wishing him a long life.
"I ask you, finally, to share with the other peoples of Europe and the world the treasure of your faith, not least as a way of honoring the memory of your countryman, who, as the successor of St. Peter, did this with extraordinary power and effectiveness," Benedict said as he concluded his homily during the Mass in the Blonia meadow.
"I ask you to stand firm in your faith! Stand firm in your hope! Stand firm in your love! Amen!" he concluded, speaking in Polish on the last day of his trip.
Predominantly Roman Catholic Poland joined the European Union only two years ago, 15 years after the collapse of communist rule.
"He told us that we should remain ourselves, that we should stay as we were before, attached to our traditions and Christian values," said Jacek Radon, 37, a Krakow businessman. "We should carry into the European Union our attachment to faith and to Christ.
"We should be ourselves, which means we should not take shortcuts to an easy and comfortable life with no responsibility, but should take responsibility and act according to our faith."
A shadow was cast over the papal visit by Saturday's attack on Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, who was to say Kaddish, or the Jewish prayer for the dead, during the ceremony led by the pope.
Schudrich told The Associated Press he was attacked in central Warsaw after confronting a man who shouted at him, "Poland for Poles!" The rabbi said the unidentified man punched him in the chest and sprayed him with what appeared to be pepper spray, but he was uninjured.
Police said they were treating the incident as a possible anti-Semitic attack.
Benedict, 79, has reached out to Poles by delivering parts of his speeches and homilies in Polish and by retracing beloved native son John Paul II's steps. He visited John Paul's birthplace, Wadowice, and Sunday's Mass was held on the same spot where John Paul also drew large crowds on his return trips to Krakow, where he served as archbishop.
Although Benedict has avoided using German, some at the Mass held German flags and a banner reading in German, "We greet our Holy Father."
Benedict has been applauded during his visit to Poland for encouraging prayers for John Paul's canonization as a saint and for saying he hopes it will happen "in the near future."
People in Krakow have responded warmly, giving him his first John Paul-sized crowds of the trip, with police estimating Sunday's crowd at 900,000 — on the order of the throngs who turned out for John Paul, and more than the roughly 300,000 who came to Benedict's Mass on Thursday in Warsaw on the first day of his trip.
Some people spent the night in the field, while others streamed in with folding chairs and umbrellas early in the morning.
Kamila Wrobel, 16, spent the night in the meadow and got soaking wet, but said it was worth it. Wrobel, who attended John Paul's Mass in the meadow in 2002, rode four hours with her Catholic youth group from the town of Debica.
"The pope is probably in Poland for the first and last time," she said. "This is a great, great experience filled with emotion.
"When he says something in Polish, then the atmosphere becomes really very special."
Ping
ping
Bump.
Is there any Christian who can think this is a coincidence?
Thank you for the beautiful pictures. Perhaps enough prayer by enough holy people can cleanse the dreadful evil from that place.
No doubt in my mind as I saw the rainbow during the coverage...
Similar to the Biblical admonition following the flood of Noah, perhaps with prayer and faith God will prevent this evil from occurring again on the earth.
Remarkable, powerful images.
Yesterday on EWTN they showed some of the open air address the Holy Father gave to the young people of Poland. There must have been hundreds of thousands in attendance. It was such a joyous event. Pope Benedict obviously felt the sincerity and warmth of the crowd. It almost looks as if the clock has gone backwards for him. He looks younger and more relaxed in his job than he did a year ago.
Powerful pics.
The rainbow is giving me goosebumps.
What powerful images!
Very moving, dziekuje
ping
Brings to mind this hymn:
O Love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.
O Light that followest all my way,
I yield my flickering torch to thee;
my heart restores its borrowed ray,
that in thy sunshine's blaze its day
may brighter, fairer be.
O Joy that seekest me through pain,
I cannot close my heart to thee;
I trace the rainbow through the rain,
and feel the promise is not vain,
that morn shall tearless be.
O Cross that liftest up my head,
I dare not ask to fly from thee;
I lay in dust life's glory dead,
and from the ground there blossoms red life that shall endless be.
Words: George Matheson, 1882
Music: St. Margaret Albert L. Peace, 1844-1912
Meter: 88 886
Very moving pictures. Thanks.
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