Friday is the 72nd anniversary of the liberation of the notorious death camp complex known as Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust. The complex included Auschwitz I and, two miles away, the much larger Auschwitz II, also known as Birkenau; that was where the Germans built four huge gas chambers, and where nearly all of the killings of Jews took place.

Of all the death factories created by Hitler’s Nazi regime to murder Jews, Birkenau was the most lethal. In the 1980s, Catholics in the village of Brzezinka (the Polish name for Birkenau) established a church in the camp. The church is topped by a large cross with another large cross in front of it. It occupies the building that was the Birkenau commandant’s headquarters, well within the perimeter of the Birkenau killing center, as shown in aerial photos. This violates a 1987 agreement signed by European cardinals and Jewish leaders that “there will be no permanent Catholic place of worship on the site of the Auschwitz and Birkenau camps.”

This church must be moved. And Pope Francis has the power to move it.

I witnessed the kindness of the man who would become Pope Francis when I traveled to Buenos Aires immediately after the Jewish community center there was bombed by terrorists in 1994, killing 85 people. It was one of the largest attacks on Jews in the Diaspora since the Holocaust. I also met Rabbi Abraham Skorka, an Argentine Conservative rabbi. Together, we tried to offer solace to the bereaved.

In those difficult days, the archbishop of Argentina, a close friend of Rabbi Skorka, spoke with deep compassion and love, bringing succor to the Jewish community. Today, that archbishop is Pope Francis.