POLAND: Pope Benedict XVI arrives in Poland for a four-day visit today, visiting the birthplace of his predecessor, John Paul, and the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The 79-year-old pope will use the visit to urge Poland's 37 million Catholics to retain their faith in an increasingly secular world and to call for further reconciliation with his German homeland. Poland lost six million countrymen, half of them Jews, under the Nazi occupation.
Pope Benedict told a crowd in St Peter's Square yesterday that he hoped Poland could undergo "a renewed springtime of faith, of civil progress and always vividly conserve the memory of my great predecessor".
During the visit, taking place under the title "Be Strong in the Faith", Pope Benedict will celebrate Mass on the same square in Warsaw where, in 1979, Pope John Paul II told his fellow Poles to "be not afraid" of the communist authorities.
He will travel to Wadowice, birthplace of his predecessor, and nearby Krakow, where Pope John Paul was ordained priest and served as archbishop.
"Pope Benedict has the feeling that the spirit of John Paul is close to him and so he follows in the footsteps of John Paul in his native country, consoling the nation and strengthening its faith," said Father Szymon Stefanowicz of Czestochowa, home to the Black Madonna shrine to be visited by the pope.
His final visit will be to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau near the town of Oswiecim. Pope Benedict will walk under the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" entrance and meet 30 survivors of the camp where up to 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were killed through systematic gassing, disease and hunger.
It will be a highly symbolic visit for the pope, whose childhood in Nazi Germany came under scrutiny after his accession last year, in particular his brief time in the Hitler Youth when membership was compulsory.
Over 80 per cent of Poles said they would follow the visit and more than two million are expected at an open-air Mass in Krakow. Schools and government offices are closing for at least one day of the visit and pub owners in the cities the pope visits have been ordered to close while the pontiff is in town.
State television network TVP has banned commercials for beer, underwear, sanitary towels and contraception, as well as all flashes of flesh during the papal visit.
When Pope Benedict steps out of his plane in Warsaw this morning, he risks stepping into several church controversies, including the continuing revelations about Polish priests who spied for the country's communist secret police, the SB.
Earlier this year, Polish bishops apologised for the estimated one in 10 priests believed to have been collaborators, but the revelations continue.
Last week the prominent priest Fr Michal Czajkowski was accused of being a voluntary SB collaborator for 15 years, claims the priest denies.
"Maybe it's time to compile a complex and professional evaluation of the history of Polish clergy in the period of communist Poland," said historian Marek Lasota.
Poles will be listening closely to Pope Benedict for any references to Radio Maryja, the controversial religious station notorious for mixing religious broadcasting with commentary of an anti-Semitic, xenophobic and homophobic nature. Already this year, the Vatican has made two expressions of "grave concern" about the station, run by Redemptorist priest Fr Tadeusz Tydzyk, because of its open political support for the ruling conservative Law and Justice Party.
