Vatican City, Jan 26, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Today, Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, archbishop of Paris, read a Message from Pope John Paul at a gathering of more than 30 world leaders to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of prisoners from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Poland.
The cardinal is the Pope's special envoy to these commemorative ceremonies. The Message was dated January 15.
The Holy Father called what happened in Auschwitz "the tragic fruit of programmed hatred," and said we must remember the millions "who, through no fault of their own, bore inhuman sufferings and were annihilated in the gas chambers and crematoriums."
He recalled his 1979 trip, as Pope, to Auschwitz, where he "paused before memorial stones with dedications to the victims in many languages, ... stopping the longest before those written in Hebrew.”