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Both of Francis's immediate predecessors, Pope Benedict, a
German, and Pope John Paul, a Pole, also visited the site during
their pontificates.
Nazi German occupying forces established the Auschwitz-Birkenau
Nazi camp during World War Two in the southern Polish town of
Oswiecim, around 70 km (43 miles) from Poland's second city,
Krakow.
The visit will take place during Francis's pre-planned trip to
Krakow for an international gathering of Catholic youth. Poland
remains a staunchly Roman Catholic country.
Between 1940 and 1945 Auschwitz developed into a vast complex of
barracks, workshops, gas chambers and crematoria, where about
1.5 million people, most of them Jews, died.
Soviet Red Army troops liberated the camp on January 27 1945.
During a visit to Rome's synagogue in January, Francis appealed
to Catholics to reject anti-Semitism and said the Holocaust, in
which some six million Jews were killed, should remind everyone
that human rights should be defended with "maximum vigilance".
A month earlier, the Vatican issued a major document saying
Catholics should not try to convert Jews.
(Reporting by Isla Binnie and Wiktor Szary; Editing by Gareth
Jones)
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