Poland: Pope Benedict made a plea as a "son of the German people" for reconciliation and world peace at the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz yesterday, ending a four-day visit in the footsteps of his predecessor, John Paul II.
Alone, he walked into the camp beneath the infamous Arbeit Macht Frei gate to the death wall where thousands of prisoners were executed.
Facing the wall, with clasped hands, he made a deep bow and removed his zuchetto cap.
At the Birkenau camp, where the Nazis murdered 1.5 million people in gas chambers and emptied their ashes into nearby ponds, Pope Benedict held back tears as he listened to Psalm 22: "O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer."
"I have come here today to implore the grace of reconciliation," said Pope Benedict in Italian as 10 rows of elderly camp survivors sat nearby. His only public prayer in German during the visit ended with the words, "Let those who are divided be reconciled." Pope Benedict recalled those who perished at the camps: Jews, Poles, Sinti and Roma and German Jews and political prisoners.
"Today we gratefully hail them as witnesses to the truth and goodness which even among our people were not eclipsed," said the pontiff, who grew up in Nazi Germany and was enrolled unwillingly for a time in the Hitler Youth.
Sun gave way to lashing rain, and finally a rainbow rose over the huts and barbed wire. To the strains of Bach, the emotion-charged visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau ended a papal visit when Benedict called on Poland - and emigrant Polish priests - to act as a bulwark against secularisation in Europe. He also expressed hope that his Polish predecessor "may soon be elevated to the altars" of sainthood.
Survivors were mixed in their views of the visit.
"We had to wait for hours and I didn't understand anything because he mostly spoke Italian," said Zygmunt Zachar (80).
"I feel like there were many signs of looking to the future like that rainbow and a stork that flew overhead," said Eva (70).
It was a more relaxed, sprightly Benedict on view in Poland. But it was nevertheless a visit characterised by adherence to scripts and dogma, with none of the easy charm of his predecessor.
Yesterday morning he celebrated Mass with almost one million worshippers in Krakow. He described the city where Karol Wojtyla served as a priest and archbishop as "my Krakow", to huge cheers. In his homily he reinforced a central message of his visit, describing Poland as a "place of central witness" in a secularising Europe.
"Share with the other peoples of Europe and the world the treasures of your faith, not least as a way of honouring the memory of your countryman," he urged his Polish audience. He told young people on Saturday evening not to be "fooled by those who want to place Christ against the church", calling Christ "the foundation that will never crumble".
The papal visit covered temporarily the fault-line in Polish society and the Polish church, between conservative traditionalists who filled the Blonie field in Krakow yesterday, and liberal, secular Poles, who filled the country's shopping centres instead.
Pope Benedict managed to please both sides: conservative clergy welcomed the anti-relativism message while liberals focused on the Pope's clear warning that priests had no place in politics, seen as a reference to Radio Maryja which openly supports the ruling Law and Justice party.
"The 600,000 young people who came to pray and stand united refute the theory that there is a crisis in the Polish church or that it is divided," said Jan Pospieszalski, a conservative television commentator.
Liberal commentators suggested that the weak leadership of Polish bishops, who regularly sought counsel from John Paul on domestic affairs, would hasten the decline of Poland's Catholic devotion.
The end of the papal visit was overshadowed by an attack on Poland's chief rabbi, Michael Schudrich, on Saturday afternoon. Police were searching for a young man who ran up to the rabbi, shouted "Poland for the Poles" and sprayed an unidentified substance in his face.