Pope Francis greeted by hundreds of thousands at Krakow meadow

More than 100,000 non-Jewish Poles, Roma, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexuals and anti-Nazi partisans also died at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp in occupied Poland.

Pope Francis urged “drowsy and tiresome kids” to swap their sofas and video games for walking boots on Saturday at an global Catholic youth festival in Poland.

Elzbieta Sobczynska, who was 10 when she was brought to Auschwitz in 1944 from the Warsaw ghetto, said that in his silence, Francis spoke volumes.

His appeal came at the end of World Youth Day, a weeklong event being held in southern Poland this year that draws young Catholics from around the world every two to three years for a spiritual pep rally.

A nun is seen near an image of Jesus of Divine Mercy before Pope Francis’ arrival to visit the Divine Mercy Shrine in Lagiewniki, a suburb of Krakow, Poland, July 30. “Is it possible that we humans created in God’s image are capable of doing these things?” the pontiff said of the atrocities 70 years ago.

Pope Francis told young people they are not called to be couch potatoes, living boring lives, but should leave their mark in history and not let others determine their future.

Francis encouraged them to continue “to be dreamers (who) believe in a new humanity, one that rejects hatred between peoples, one that refuses to see borders as barriers”.

“Finding their happiness in the Lord, they are not content with a life of mediocrity, but burn with the desire to bear witness and reach out to others”, he said.

Pope Francis is the third consecutive pope to visit the site, where more than 1 million people, mostly Jews, were killed by Adolf Hitler’s forces during World War II.

He said: “Dear young people, we didn’t come into this world to ‘vegetate”, to take it easy, to make our lives a comfortable sofa to fall asleep on.

At the dark underground prison cell that once housed St. Maximilian Kolbe, a Polish friar who sacrificed his life to save a fellow prisoner who had a family, Francis prayed again.

On Saturday he was resting at the archbishop’s residence in Krakow after a morning Mass and lunch with young volunteers, and ahead of his evening meeting with the youth, which will include prayers and artistic performances.

Meanwhile, Vatican spokesman Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi said Pope Francis has met with a child without legs for whom he bought artificial limbs.

He said that Jesus’ call to his disciples to minister to the world is also relevant today to church men and women.

When Pope Francis arrives in Poland this week for World Youth Day, he will meet a nation still deeply committed to its conservative Catholic traditions and to the memory of St. John Paul II, who inspired this country’s.

Pope Francis has made a brief unscheduled appearance in Krakow, carrying on the long tradition of a favorite Polish son, John Paul II, by talking to crowds from the window of the bishops’ residence.

It is worth noting that the church where Francis celebrated Mass is part of a very large John Paul II Centre-the brainchild of Cardinal Dziwisz-that includes a conference center and a museum with relics of the saint, including his blood-stained cassock.

“Today, we adults need you to teach us how to live in diversity, in dialogue, to experience multiculturalism not as a threat but an opportunity”, he continued.

Cardinal Luis Tagle says that a gesture such this is a mark of papal visits such as when he went to the Philippines previous year when – aside from the gift of his presence – he also gave a gift that would stay and that would benefit the poor.