Auschwitz Archives

Edith Stein teaches us the way to peripheries of our own hearts
- Commentary
- August 13, 2017
In 1922, Edith Stein read the autobiography of St. Teresa of Avila through the night. The spiritual account rocked her world, and led her to the peripheries of her own heart. And there, in the avoidance of religious truth and its call to love and mercy, Edith found peace and consolation — a peace that would sustain her all the way to Auschwitz.
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At Auschwitz, Francis makes ‘We Remember’ a permanent papal vow
- Analysis, World Youth Day Krakow
- July 28, 2016
Francis on Friday becomes the third pope to visit Auschwitz, and the first whose presence isn’t intimately linked to his own past — making clear that memory of the horrors that unfolded in the camp is now a corporate commitment of the Catholic Church.
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Weigel says that in Krakow, World Youth Day is ‘coming home’
- Global Church, Interviews, World Youth Day Krakow
- July 2, 2016
George Weigel believes that in Krakow this July during World Youth Day, there will be two starring roles — Pope Francis, who’ll lead the celebration, and St. John Paul II, who founded it against considerable opposition and skepticism. “This isn’t ‘Hamlet’,” Weigel says, “it’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’.”
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Pope wants no speeches at Auschwitz, only prayer and tears

Although Pope Francis has had plenty to say about the Holocaust over the years, when he visits Auschwitz in late July, he says “I would like to go to that place of horror without speeches, without crowds … and may the Lord give me the grace to cry.”

World Youth Day to include focus on persecuted Christians

KRAKOW, POLAND—For most of those who’ve ever attended an international Catholic rally known as “World Youth Day”, the event is a spiritual adrenaline rush hard to top. For a full week, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of young people from all over the world meet in one city to