Casting a pall over all those assembled will be what is today the greatest violation of Holocaust memory — the church at Birkenau.

The church, operating in a building where Jews were tortured and raped, represents an imminent threat to the integrity of Holocaust memory.

It stands in violation of a solemn agreement signed in 1987 by European cardinals and European Jewish leaders that “there will be no permanent Catholic place of worship on the site of the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps,” and  in violation of the 1972 UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Culture and Natural Heritage.