Francis began his second day in the Baltics in Lithuania’s second city, Kaunas, where an estimated 3,000 Jews survived out of a community of 37,000 during the 1941-1944 Nazi occupation.

During Mass in the lush Santakos Park under a brilliant autumn sun, Francis honoured both Jewish victims of Nazi-era executions and the Lithuanians who were deported to Siberian gulags or were tortured and oppressed at home during five decades of Soviet occupation.

“Earlier generations still bear the scars of the period of the occupation, anguish at those who were deported, uncertainty about those who never returned, shame for those who were informers and traitors,” Francis told the crowd.

“Kaunas knows about this. Lithuania as a whole can testify to it, still shuddering at the mention of Siberia, or the ghettos of Vilnius and Kaunas, among others.”

He denounced those who get caught up in debating who was more virtuous in the past and fail to address the tasks of the present – an apparently veiled reference to historic revisionism that is afflicting much of Eastern Europe as it comes to terms with the Holocaust.

The issue is acute in Lithuania, where ordinary Lithuanians executed Jews alongside the Nazi occupiers, wiping out the Jewish population of the capital of Vilnius that was known for centuries as the “the Jerusalem of the North”…

In a video testimonial as part of the White Chair Film series, the 25-year-old American artist explained how growing up being told she was an “amazing singer” eventually damaged her.

Aged 12, she was dropped from a record label company and struggled with her identity.

“Every executive that I would talk to, there was always some reason they didn’t want to sign me,” she said during the 6-minute video.

“They wanted me to be this outgoing, bubbly personality, which I didn’t have, and that’s when I really started comparing myself to other people.

She explained how she found her true identity in Christ, sharing a message to her 12-year-old self and anyone else struggling with finding their true identity.

“One day you’re going to grow into your own skin and be the girl that God uniquely made as you,” she said close to tears.

“And you don’t have to compare yourself to anybody. I didn’t have to change myself; I can just be myself.”

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Sheraton, Westin and other Starwood hotels are expected to have the religious texts placed in the rooms by the end of the year.

Marriot’s founding family is active in the Mormon Church and has been putting both the Bible and the Book of Mormon in its rooms since opening its first hotel in the late 1950s.

Explaining the move, Marriot said in a statement sent to the Associated: “There are many guests who are not digitally connected who appreciate having one or both of these books available.

“It’s a tradition appreciated by many, objected to by few.”

The Bibles will be provided by Gideons International, which is a group that already donates Bibles free of charge to hotels, prisons, hospitals and other public places.

The costs for the Books of Mormon will be shared by the Marriott Foundation and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

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Rev Canon Pitts – who is one of the first black women to be ordained as a Parish Priest in the Church of England in 1994, will host a Day of Remembrance on Sunday at Holy Trinity Church, Birchfield, in Birmingham.

Speaking to Premier ahead of the service, she told Premier why the day was so important.

“Four years ago I felt strongly that God was saying, ‘stop and let’s remember’. ‘And what is it we’re remembering?’ said one person.

“We’re remembering where we came from because unless you can remember where you’ve come from then it’s highly likely you won’t know where you’re going.”

The commemoration will be the second of its kind at the church.

Explaining why these victims should never be forgotten, she added: “It is about pausing to say, ‘we are here because they were there and we’ve arrived here because they were who they were’.

“A group of people – from whom I have descended died, were enslaved and it is my duty to remember that.”

The transatlantic slave trade was the largest enforced movement of people in history. It is estimated that 15-20 million men, women and children, were extracted from their homes and sold as slaves.

For more than 200 years Britain was at the heart of this lucrative transatlantic slave trade. Enslaved Africans and their descendants were central to the rise of it as an industrial power.

Representatives from the Anglican and Pentecostal…

As he greeted journalists en route to Lithuania, Francis was given a book about the former pope by Polish photographer Grzegorz Galazka.

Receiving the large book which features a beaming John Paul on the cover, Francis quipped: “(Pope John Paul II) was a saint, I am the devil.”

Laughing, Mr Galazka immediately corrected him: “No, you are both saints, you are both saints.”

Francis’s quip appeared to acknowledge that he has his detractors, particularly among conservative Catholics who long for the more doctrinaire papacies of John Paul and Benedict XVI.

The criticism of Francis by conservatives has grown more vocal recently amid the church’s sex abuse scandals and the distress over his opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive Communion.

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