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The Latest: Pope Warns Lithuanians about Anti-Semitism

The Latest: Pope Warns Lithuanians about Anti-Semitism

Sunday, 23 September 2018 05:37 AM EDT

KAUNAS, Lithuania (AP) — The Latest on Pope Francis' trip to the three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (all times local):

11:15 a.m.

Pope Francis is warning against a rebirth of the "pernicious" anti-Semitic sentiments that fueled the Holocaust as he marked the annual remembrance for Lithuania's centuries-old Jewish community that was nearly extinguished during World War II.

Francis spoke at a Mass on Sunday that marked the 75th anniversary of the final destruction of the Ghetto in Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital which had been known for centuries as the "Jerusalem of the North" for its importance to Jewish thought and politics.

He warned against the temptation to desire primacy and domination over others. He prayed for the gift of discernment "to detect in time any new seeds of that pernicious attitude, any whiff of it that can taint the heart of generations."

Historical revisionism is a hot topic in Lithuania, where ordinary Lithuanians executed Jews alongside the Nazi occupiers, wiping out the Jewish population of the capital of Vilnius during the war.

9 a.m.

Pope Francis has paid tribute to Lithuanians who suffered and died during Soviet and Nazi occupations on the day the country remembers the near-extermination of its centuries-old Jewish community during the Holocaust.

Francis began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania's second city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation.

During Mass in Santakos Park, Francis honored both Jewish victims of Nazi-era executions and the Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured and oppressed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.

He denounced those who debate who was more virtuous in the past and fail to address the tasks of the present — an apparent reference to historic revisionism. The issue is acute in Lithuania, where ordinary Lithuanians executed Jews alongside the Nazi occupiers, wiping out the Jewish population of the capital of Vilnius.

© Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.


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The Latest on Pope Francis' trip to the three Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia (all times local):11:15 a.m.Pope Francis is warning against a rebirth of the "pernicious" anti-Semitic sentiments that fueled the Holocaust as he marked the annual remembrance for...
EU,REL,Baltics,Pope,The Latest
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2018-37-23
Sunday, 23 September 2018 05:37 AM
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