Why God's Silence? Pope Asks at Auschwitz

"In a Place Like This, Words Fail"

KRAKOW, Poland, MAY 28, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Benedict XVI visited the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp today, a stop he personally wished to include in his pilgrimage in Poland.

"To speak in this place of horror, in this place where unprecedented mass crimes were committed against God and man, is almost impossible -- and it is particularly difficult and troubling for a Christian, for a Pope from Germany," the Holy Father said today as he began his address.

"In a place like this, words fail," he said. "In the end, there can only be a dread silence -- a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God: Why, Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?"

"I come here today as a son of the German people," Benedict XVI said. "For this very reason, I can and must echo [John Paul II's] words: I could not fail to come here. I had to come.

"It is a duty before the truth and the just due of all who suffered here, a duty before God, for me to come here as the successor of Pope John Paul II and as a son of the German people -- a son of that people over which a ring of criminals rose to power by false promises of future greatness and the recovery of the nation's honor, prominence and prosperity, but also through terror and intimidation, with the result that our people was used and abused as an instrument of their thirst for destruction and power."

"Yes, I could not fail to come here," the Holy Father exclaimed.

Personal preference

Like those who were deported to the camp years ago, he was able to read the words over the gate, written in his native German, "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work liberates).

Vatican spokesman Joaquيn Navarro Valls confirmed on Saturday that it was a visit that Benedict XVI personally included on his agenda for his time in Poland.

After visiting the places of horror in silence, praying for a long while and speaking to survivors of the wartime extermination camp, the Holy Father delivered his address with a somewhat hoarse voice.

"Where was God in those days? Why was he silent?" the Pontiff asked.

"We cannot peer into God's mysterious plan -- we see only piecemeal, and we would be wrong to set ourselves up as judges of God and history," he noted.

"And our cry to God must also be a cry that pierces our very heart, a cry that awakens within us God's hidden presence -- so that his power, the power he has planted in our hearts, will not be buried or choked within us by the mire of selfishness, pusillanimity, indifference or opportunism," Benedict XVI warned.

Forces of darkness

"Let us cry out to God, with all our hearts, at the present hour, when new misfortunes befall us, when all the forces of darkness seem to issue anew from human hearts: whether it is the abuse of God's name as a means of justifying senseless violence against innocent persons, or the cynicism which refuses to acknowledge God and ridicules faith in him," the Pope continued.

"Let us cry out to God," he added, "that he may draw men and women to conversion and help them to see that violence does not bring peace, but only generates more violence -- a morass of devastation in which everyone is ultimately the loser."

After leaving the concentration camp, the Holy Father went by car to the Krakow/Balice airport, where the farewell ceremony took place, attended by Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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