A Pope's Duty at Auschwitz

"The Vatican recently announced that Pope Benedict XVI will visit Auschwitz on his scheduled trip to Poland later this month. This will be his second Auschwitz visit. In 1979, when Joseph Ratzinger was archbishop of Munich, he accompanied Pope John Paul II to the former Nazi death camp, where they celebrated Holy Communion."

So starts an article in the IHT. It also suggests:

"One hopes that Benedict will use this moment the way, for example, that Chancellor Willy Brandt did in 1970 when he fell to his knees, speechless with remorse, before the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, or the way President Richard von Weizsäcker did in 1985 when he marked the 40th anniversary of the end of World War II with a landmark speech about the Germans' collective responsibility to their past. "All of us, whether guilty or innocent, whether young or old, must accept the past," Weizsäcker said. "We are all affected by its consequences and are liable for it."

Is the writer asking too much? Read the full IHT article here.

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