Pope to visit Auschwitz?

Talking to reporters after the audience with Pope Francis on Monday at the Vatican, the Polish President Andrzej Duda revealed that while in Poland for the World Youth Day in Kraków in the summer of next year Pope Francis would like to visit the Black Madonna shrine of Częstochowa and to pray at the site of the former Nazi German concentration camp of Auschwitz.

Duda said that he expects a communique on the programme of the Pope’s visit to Poland to be published by the Vatican in due course. ‘It’s a source of great joy to be able to host the Pope on our soil’, the President said.

He described the Pope as “an extraordinary personality, a man of incredible calm, radiating goodness.”

Asked by reporters if he had to convince the Pope that he is neither an ultranationalist, nor a radical or populist, as he is portrayed by the Italian daily La Repubblica which is read by the Pope, President Duda said: “I did not have to do that. I think that the Holy Father has an excellent knowledge [of what is going on].” (mk/rg/di)