Pope stops in Wadowice on eve of Auschwitz visit

Pope Benedict XVI visited his predecessor John Paul II's birthplace Wadowice on Saturday - a Polish town which was once home to a flourishing Jewish community. The visit came a day before the German pope was set to visit the Auschwitz death camp. Benedict has acknowledged he was forced to join the Hitler Youth as a teenager. The stop to the infamous death camp was not originally planned, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said Saturday. "But the pope said 'I want to go, I have to go,"' said Navarro-Valls.