Vatican City - German-born Pope Benedict XVI will say prayers in Hebrew while visiting a German synagogue that was destroyed by the Nazis, said Cardinal Joachim Meisner of Cologne. Meisner is organizing the pope's Aug. 18-21 trip to Cologne for World Youth Day.
This will be the second synagogue visit by a pope, following Pope John Paul's II's groundbreaking visit to Rome's main synagogue in 1986.
The visit will include a prayer service in which the psalms will be "prayed," the cardinal said. "We have learned them in Hebrew."
Since his April 19 election as pope, Benedict has reached out to Jews while denouncing crimes by the Nazis. Like most teens in his generation, he served in the Hitler Youth. But he deserted from the German army in the waning days of World War II.
Jewish leaders have given Benedict high marks for his efforts to improve relations with Jews during his many years as a high Vatican official.
"We (the Germans) carry our wounds up to this day, and sometimes they are still bleeding wounds," Meisner said of the Nazi era.
In that context, and that of the first German pope in 500 years, the cardinal said the visit becomes an "unequivocal symbol to our elder brothers and sisters" that the Holocaust "must never happen again."