Pope says mass as he prepares for Auschwitz visit

KRAKOW, Poland, May 28 (Reuters) A huge crowd attended a mass with Pope Benedict in Poland today as he prepared to visit the Auschwitz death camp to pray as leader of the world's Roman Catholics and a ''son of Germany''.

Benedict said mass for more than 900,000 people in a field in Krakow where John Paul II, his Polish predecessor, traditionally held huge gatherings with his countrymen before returning to Rome.

The throbbing crowd waved a sea of banners and flags while Benedict passed through on a ''popemobile'' car at the start of the event -- a scene reminiscent of John Paul's visits.

In his sermon, Benedict urged Poland, which has one of the world's most active Christian communities, to ''share with the other people of the world the treasure of your faith'' as a fitting and lasting tribute to Pope John Paul.

Many in the crowd were moved to tears. ''After John Paul's death, I thought that such a miracle for a pope to come to Poland would not repeat itself,'' said Danuta Latowska, 27. ''And here my dreams and prayers have been fulfilled.'' The trip was due to reach a poignant climax today afternoon when he was to visit the most infamous of the death camps that his countrymen set up and ran during World War Two.

Any visit by a Pontiff to a camp where nearly 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered in World War Two is a highly charged event, evoking such complex issues as Christian-Jewish relations, German guilt and the evil in the world.

The symbolism is heightened by the fact that Benedict, 79, is a German who was involuntarily enrolled in the Hitler Youth paramilitary organisation and then drafted into an anti-aircraft unit towards the end of World War Two.

Benedict, who visited Auschwitz with John Paul in 1979 and with other German bishops in 1980, has said he saw slave labourers during his short army service. The brutality of the Nazi regime helped him decide to be a priest.

TWO NATIVE SONS ''John Paul went to Auschwitz as a son of the Polish people and Benedict is going as the son of the German people,'' Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls told reporters yesterday.

Navarro-Valls said Benedict had insisted on visiting Auschwitz during his four-day trip to Poland, which ends on Sunday after a sentimental journey to the cities and shrines that were central to his predecessor's life and spirituality.

Benedict will walk through Auschwitz's notorious gate with its metal arch reading ''Arbeit Macht Frei'' (Work sets you free), meet former inmates and Jewish groups and visit a Catholic educational centre for dialogue and prayer near the camp.

He then visits Birkenau, the second part of the Auschwitz complex, where Jews transported from around Europe were sent from their trains to the gas chambers. The main building and tracks remain but Nazis blew up the gas chambers when they fled.

After prayers in several languages and the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, Benedict will pray for peace in German, light a candle and deliver his main speech in Italian.

Benedict has avoided speaking his native tongue during his tour, to avoid hurting Polish and Jewish sensitivities.

Regarded as the largest Jewish graveyard in the world, Auschwitz was the centrepiece of Adolf Hitler's ''Final Solution'' to exterminate Europe's Jews.

REUTERS SY PM1450