"One more great experience" of his apostolic journey to Poland, revealed the Pope to the congregation, was "the meeting with the young" in Blonie park, Cracow: "With them said Benedict XVI I lingered to meditate on the evangelical parable of the house built on rock". The following day’s Mass too, marking the end of the Pope’s visit to the very place in which John Paul II had celebrated all the Masses of his apostolic journeys in his homeland, was an opportunity to "renew, amidst the Polish people, the magnificent announcement of the Christian truth on man created and redeemed in Christ; that truth that so many times John Paul II had powerfully proclaimed to spur everyone to be strong in faith, in hope and in love". "Remain strong in faith!", exclaimed the Pope as he recalled the motto of his pilgrimage: "This is the task I entrusted to the children of my beloved Poland, encouraging them to persevere in their faithfulness to Christ and the Church, so that Europe and the world will not miss the contribution of their evangelical testimony. All Christians this is the Holy Father’s invitation referred to the last stop of his journey must feel bound to testify this, so that in the third millennium no man will ever experience again such horrors as those mournfully recalled by the concentration camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau".
