The texts of all the addresses are here.
It is uncertain whether the pope’s lack of emphasis on the role of ordinary Germans will anger Jewish groups. Benedict, though, is well known to top Jewish leaders, who have met with him for decades in an effort to improve once bitter relations between Jews and Roman Catholics.
Rabbi David Rosen, a top official with the American Jewish Committee who has known Benedict for nearly two decades, called his omission of a broader, national responsibility "lamentable" but nothing new in the pope’s often expressed interpretation of the war.
"Will it make any difference to Jewish-Catholic relations?" Rabbi Rosen said in a telephone interview from Israel. "No, because Jewish-Catholic relations anyway are no longer based upon our view of the past but on the nature of relations in the present, and from that perspective Benedict XVI is as good as it gets."
(snip)
Next to the wall, he met with 32 survivors of the camp, all but one Polish Catholics. He gave a double kiss to the only Jew in the group, Henryk Mandelbaum. Another survivor, Jerzy Bielecki, told the pope how he escaped from Auschwitz in 1944 by slowly collecting parts of an SS uniform, then sewing them together. He said he left with a Jewish woman, whose life was saved.
Many news links at American Papist.
John Allen’s reports – including one on the outreach of the Knights of Columbus in Poland.
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