The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Holocaust dead honoured
POPE FRANCIS has honoured Jews killed in the Holocaust as he capped his three-day Middle East trip with stops at some of the holiest and most haunting sites for Jews.
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 flowers in the Hall of Remembrance.
And then one by one, he kissed the hands of half-a-dozen Holocaust survivors in a sign of humility and honour as he heard their stories and of loved ones killed by the Nazis during the Second World War.
“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.”
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 a crack between the stones.
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. An express train has slammed into a parked freight train in northern India killing at least 40 people, officials said.
The Gorakhpur Express passenger train was travelling at high speed and slammed on its brakes in an attempt to stop, but ploughed into the train sitting on the tracks near a railway station in Uttar Pradesh state.
Six of the cars on the express train derailed.
At least 40 people were killed and about 100 others were injured say police. Moscow is ready for a direct dialogue with Ukraine’s new president and does not need any Western mediation, Russia’s foreign minister has said.
Sergey Lavrov said Russia has a positive view on Ukraine’s presidential vote and is ready to deal with billionaire candy tycoon Petro Poroshenko, who holds a commanding lead, according to early returns.