Pope to remember Holocaust victims

Pope Benedict XVI is beginning a challenging three-day pilgrimage to Austria with a solemn tribute to Jewish Holocaust victims and an appeal to diplomats serving with the United Nations nuclear agency and other world organisations.

Before his visit, Benedict's seventh foreign trip in two years as pope, the German-born pontiff spoke of his affection for Austria, a mostly Catholic country "which has been near to me since my childhood".

But the Pope, who visited and holidayed in Austria often as a cardinal, faces a battle to win back many Austrian believers who, disgusted by clergy sex scandals and deeply resentful of a government-imposed church tax, have grown cold -- and tens of thousands have left the church altogether.

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