Yesterday we saw the Pope in Auschwitz-Birkenau. We saw him light an oil lamp at report for the victims and go down, in silence and prayer, to the cell where the priest Maximilian Kolbe was locked up to die of hunger and thirst. He then greeted some survivors and Christians who helped the persecuted. He did not pronounce any speech. He only left a message in the book of memories of the camp. Perhaps we expected some words from Francis about God and the problem of evil, and that he would try to answer, as Benedict XVI did, the question of where God was in Auschwitz. But the visit was one of silence and prayer.

Evil is a mystery. We can talk for hours and hours about evil, write voluminous treatises on suffering, and wonder who is to blame for the horrors, but in the end it remains a mystery.

The Pope has just taught us what our attitude should be in the face of this mystery: silence and prayer, so that the pain of millions of people may penetrate our hearts and we may decide never to trivialize evil. And the request for forgiveness not only for a few, but for all humanity.

Francis prayed in the cell of St. Maximilian Kolbe, who offered to die in place of Franciszek Gajowniczek, condemned with nine other men in retaliation for the escape of a prisoner. Kolbe told S.S. Colonel Karl Fritzsch: "I am a Polish Catholic priest, I am already old. I would like to take the place of that man who has a wife and children". The substitution was accepted. This is the way to overcome evil: submit life for the sake of others. In the midst of that barbarism of hatred and evil, a man submission his life for another man. Kolbe shows us that the last word, the only important word, is not evil, but love. God was in Auschwitz, in Kolbe's heart.