Pope Francis emphasised that remembering the Holocaust helps us overcome “so many deplorable forms of apathy towards our neighbour” in a speech at a conference in Rome.
Addressing participants of the Rome International Conference on Responsibility of States Institutions and Individuals in the Fight against Anti-Semitism in the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) area, the Pope mentioned three key words: responsibility, indifference and memory.
“We are responsible when we are able to respond. It is not merely a question of analysing the causes of violence and refuting their perverse reasoning, but of being actively prepared to respond to them,” said the Pope.
Hatred
He said that hatred in all its forms is not the only enemy, but even more fundamentally it is indifference, as it “paralyses and impedes us from doing what is right even when we know that it is right”.
I do not grow tired of repeating, he said “that indifference is a virus that is dangerously contagious in our time, a time when we are ever more connected with others, but are increasingly less attentive to others”.
Recalling the recent commemoration of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Pontiff underlined that “in order to recover our humanity, to recover our human understanding of reality and to overcome so many deplorable forms of apathy towards our neighbour, we need this memory…”
In addition, the Vatican’s permanent representative to the OSCE marked Holocaust Remembrance Day with an appeal not to forget the lessons of the past.
At an OSCE Permanent Council meeting, Msgr Janusz Urbanczyk said: “The Holocaust teaches us that utmost vigilance is always needed to be able to take prompt action in defence of human dignity and peace.”
Differences
Quoting Pope Francis, who said that the cruelty perpetrated in Nazi extermination camps is still alive today, Msgr Urbanczyk said that “the International Holocaust Remembrance Day should help us to ‘go beyond evil and differences’, and open every possible pathway of peace and hope in our world of today”.
“In the face of the outright barbarism of the Holocaust, in the face of the attempted destruction of an entire people, in the face of a cold, relentless violence and darkness, the international community, states and individuals must strive to live out the principles of peace, justice, solidarity and reconciliation.
“They must do so for the simple reason, as Pope Francis explained after having prayed in utter silence in the concentration camp in July last year, that ‘cruelty did not end at Auschwitz and Birkenau’,” he said.