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Kaunas, Lithuania – Pope Francis warned on September 23 that society must guard against "any smell" of yet another rise in anti-Semitism, claiming that young people who have not known the barbaric killings of the Holocaust can get lost in their "siren song".
Highlighting the 75th anniversary of the Nazi murder of tens of thousands of Jews in the Lithuanian capital in 1943, the pontiff declared that humanity should seek to "detect in time any new seed of this pernicious attitude" that taints the generations who have not known those moments. "
Francis was speaking in an address before the recitation of the Angelus prayer at midday with about 100,000 people in this central Lithuanian city on the occasion of the National Day of Remembrance of the Genocide Jews, on September 23, 1943. in Vilnius, the national capital.
The pope will visit a ghetto memorial later in the day and will also visit the Lithuanian Museum of Occupations and Freedom Fights, which presents an exhibition on the Holocaust.
Prior to World War II, Lithuania was one of the largest Jewish settlement areas in Europe, with about 210,000 Jews in the country. About 15,000 remained at the end of the war.
Francis mentioned anti-Semitism as part of a reflection on reading the day of the Book of Wisdom, which speaks of a persecution of the righteous by the wicked or the wicked.
"The wicked claim to believe that" power is the norm of justice, "said the pontiff. "They dominate the weak, use their power to impose a way of thinking, an ideology, a dominant mentality."
"Seventy-five years ago, this nation was the scene of the final destruction of the Vilnius ghetto, it was the culmination of the massacre of thousands of Jews that began two years ago," continued the Pope .
"Think about these times and ask the Lord to give us the gift of discernment to detect in time any new seed of this pernicious attitude, any smell," he said.
Francis is visiting Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from 22 to 25 September. He is the second pope to visit the three countries, following the visit of John Paul II in 1993.
Each of these countries, located en bloc on the Baltic Sea immediately to the northeast of Poland and to the west of Russia, was occupied by Germany during the Second World War and was now part of of the Soviet Union.
Earlier on September 23, Francis celebrated Mass in Kaunas's Santakos Park and spoke of how Jesus warned those who seek prestige.
"The thirst for power and glory is the sign of those who fail to heal the memories of the past and, perhaps for that very reason, to take an active part in the tasks of the present," said the pontiff.
Referring to the reading of the Gospel of Mark, in which Jesus places a child in front of his disciples, the Pope asked: "Who would put Jesus among us today, here this Sunday morning?
"Maybe it's the ethnic minorities in our city," suggested Francis. "Maybe it's the elderly and the lonely or those young people who do not find meaning in life because they have lost their roots."
The crowds in Lithuania, which has a Catholic community of about 77% of its 2.8 million inhabitants, expressed their enthusiasm for Francis' visit. Around 5 am, people started arriving at Kaunas open air park for the pope's mass. They wore heavy coats and hats for the beautiful days of autumn.
The pope will continue his visit to the Baltic countries on his way to Latvia on 24 September. He will return to Lithuania in the evening before traveling to Estonia on 25 September and returning to Rome later in the day.
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