However, he did express his feelings, writing in the Auschwitz memorial’s guest book in Spanish: “Lord, have pity on your people. Lord, forgiveness for so much cruelty”, according to an image posted on Twitter by the Auschwitz museum.
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In front of the death wall where the Nazis summarily executed thousands of people by firing squad, he tenderly kissed former prisoners of the camp.
The late pontiff John Paul II, who was born in Poland, visited Auschwitz in 1979.
Entering the camp, Francis passed through the gate bearing the mocking words “arbeit macht frei”, which is German for “work sets you free”.
With aides using small flashlights to light his way, Francis visited the underground cell where Franciscan monk Maksymilian Kolbe was killed after offering his life to save a Polish man whom camp handlers had picked to die of starvation.
Vatican and Polish church officials have said that Francis will express his sorrow in silence at the site, mourning the victims in quiet prayer and meditation.
While at Auschwitz, the Pope greeted the prime minister of Poland and 12 Holocaust survivors and prayed silently in the cell where St. Maximilian Mary Kolbe was martyred.
Pope Francis then traveled to Auschwitz II-Birkenau, the largest of the extermination camps.
The pontiff was mostly silent during his two-hour visit, except for speaking with the survivors.
The pope arrived July 29 at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, an area now blanketed by green fields and empty barracks lined by barbed wire fences, remnants of a horror that remains embedded in history.
A special part of my visit to Krakow is this meeting with the little patients of this hospital.
“I feel like the Pope came especially to see me”, said Janina Iwanska, 86, who was brought to the camp as a teenager following the failed Warsaw Uprising against Adolf Hitler’s forces in 1944.
Both of his predecessors had a personal historical connection to the site, with the first, John Paul II, coming from Poland and himself a witness to the unspeakable suffering inflicted on his nation during the German occupation.
He then travelled the two miles to Birkenau, the vast satellite camp where the Nazis murdered Jews, Roma and others from across Europe.
The Pope, in Poland to mark the 1,050th anniversary of Christianity in the country, will also spend some time talking to camp survivors and Poles who helped Jews during the war.
He paused at each of 23 plaques, each reading in a different language: “For ever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity”.
A priest from a village where the Nazis killed a Polish family because it was protecting Jews was chosen to read a psalm in Polish during Pope Francis’ visit to the site of the German Nazi death camp of Birkenau.
The pontiff was joined in his visit by Jewish leaders, including the Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich, who recited Psalm 130 and the Mourner’s Kaddish at the site, and Rabbi David Rosen, the American Jewish Committee’s International Director of Inter-religious Affairs.
While Benedict spoke in Italian – deliberately avoiding German – during his visit, questioning why God was silent at the slaughter of so many, Francis’ visit had no speeches.
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Friday’s theme exploring suffering included a Way of the Cross procession that drew 800,000 young Catholics to a Krakow meadow.
