Pope Francis honours Holocaust victims
Pope Francis has honoured those killed in the Holocaust as he capped his three-day Middle East trip with poignant stops at some of the holiest and most haunting sites for Jewish people.
At Israel's request, Francis deviated from his whirlwind itinerary to pray at a memorial to victims of terrorism, giving the Jewish state his full attention a day after voicing strong support for the Palestinian cause.
Visiting the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial, Francis prayed before a crypt with ashes of victims and laid a wreath of yellow and white flowers in the Hall of Remembrance.
And then one by one, he kissed the hands of a half-dozen Holocaust survivors in a sign of humility and honour as he heard their stories and of loved ones killed by the Nazis during World War II.
"Never again, Lord, never again!" Francis said.
"Here we are, Lord, shamed by what man - created in your own image and likeness - was capable of doing."
Joseph Gottdenker, born in Poland in 1942, said he briefly told the pope how he was saved as a boy by Catholics who hid him during the Holocaust. Mr Gottdenker, who now lives in Canada, said he was more emotional than he expected to be when he met the pope.
"The Catholic people who saved me and risked the lives of their whole families to save me, they are looking down today and proud to see me meet the leader of their faith," Mr Gottdenker said after the ceremony.
A day earlier, upon his arrival in Israel after visiting the West Bank, Francis clearly condemned the slaughter of six million Jews during the Holocaust, making up for what many Jews felt was a tepid speech from Pope Benedict XVI during his 2009 visit to Yad Vashem.
Earlier, Francis prayed at Jerusalem's Western Wall, the holiest place where Jews can pray, and left a note with the text of the "Our Father" prayer written in his native Spanish in one of the cracks between the stones.
After praying at the wall, Francis then embraced his good friend, Argentine Rabbi Abraham Skorka, and a leader of Argentina's Muslim community, Omar Abboud, both of whom joined his official delegation for the trip in a sign of interfaith friendship.
His gesture at the wall and at the terrorism memorial - head bowed in prayer, right hand touching the stone - was the same he used a day earlier when he made an impromptu stop at the Israeli separation barrier surrounding the West Bank city of Bethlehem.
