On Friday, Pope Francis
is to become the third Roman Catholic pope to visit Auschwitz. John
Paul II was the first Polish pope in the church’s 2,000-year history.
Auschwitz is less than an hour from where he was born, and his 1979
visit was poignant. Every bit as dramatic was the 2006 visit by the German-born Benedict XVI who had at 14 been a member of the Hitler Youth.
But
Francis’ visit could be the most significant ever if he uses the
symbolic backdrop to break with the policies of six predecessors over 70
years and order the release of the Vatican’s sealed Holocaust-era archives.