Pope: saints and martyrs, antithesis to hell death camps and contemporary nihilism

(August 10, 2009) Recalling some saints whose memory is celebrated in the weeks to come, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed that they are witness to a "Christian humanism" that differs deeply from an "atheistic humanism". He was speaking during his Angelus message on Sunday 9^th of August at his Summer Residence at Castel Gandolfo. The pope cited in particular the martyrs Maximilian Kolbe and Edith Stein. Edith Stein, explained the pope, was “born in the Jewish faith and was won over by Christ in adulthood, she became a Carmelite nun and sealed her life with martyrdom.” St. Maximilian Kolbe, is a “son of Poland and St. Francis of Assisi, a great apostle of Mary Immaculate”. Both are martyrs killed in Auschwitz. Pope Benedict visited the Auschwitz concentration camp during a trip to Poland in May 2006. "The Nazi concentration camp, he added, as every death camp, can be considered an extreme symbol of evil, of the hell that comes to earth when man forgets God, and when God is replaced, usurping from Him the right to decide what is good and what is evil, to give life and or to take life. Unfortunately, this phenomenon is not confined to the death camp. It is rather the culmination of an extensive and widespread reality of often nebulous boundaries." This reality is precisely the antithesis that became clear at the end of the second millennium, "the opposition between atheistic humanism and Christian humanism, between holiness and nihilism”. We note the saints, said the Pope, who, practicing the gospel of love, make reason of their hope, they show the true face of God who is Love, and at the same time, the true face of man, created in image and likeness of God." The Pontiff also mentioned St. Clare, and especially the martyrs St. Pontian Pope and the deacon St. Lawrence, wonderful models of holiness.