Pope Benedict XVI devoted his address at an open air Mass in Viterbo, Italy, to recalling the deaths of "tens of millions of people" in the Holocaust and the Second World War.

Following vast international pressure and condemnation, including a sharp riposte from German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the Vatican says it is asking a Holocaust-denying bishop to publicly recant

Pope Benedict says he has full solidarity with Jewish people and warns against Holocaust denial, following outrage at his reinstatement of an excommunicated bishop who says there were no gas chambers.

Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams and Chief Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks joined representatives from different religious communities at the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ‘Lessons from Auschwitz Project’ this week.

Churches in Germany have remembered the 70th anniversary of the systematic attack by the Nazis in 1938 on Jewish Germans, saying that many Christians failed then in their duty to speak out.

The UK government will sponsor student trips to Auschwitz concentration camp in an effort to keep the message of the Nazi Holocaust alive and relevant to younger generations, say reports in Deutsche Welle, The Times and the BBC.

The general secretary of the World Council of Churches (WCC), the Rev Dr Samuel Kobia, plans to visit member churches and Christian communities in the strife-ridden occupied Palestinian territories and Israel.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, spiritual head of the world's 77 million Anglicans, has denounced the political manipulation of the Nazi Holocaust for current political ends, and has called for a renewed struggle against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms.

United Nations member states are being urged this week to support the draft UN General Assembly resolution condemning Holocaust denial. A vote is expected on Friday 26 January 2007. The move is being supported by human rights and faith groups, as well as the American Jewish Congress.