Pope in Slovakia to honor Holocaust dead on Day 2 of tour

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia (AP) — Pope Francis is opening his visit to Slovakia by meeting with the president ahead of an encounter with the country’s Jewish community. Francis was meeting Monday with Zuzana Caputova, the first female president of Slovakia. It’s the second day of his four-day pilgrimage to Hungary and Slovakia, his first international outing since undergoing intestinal surgery. The highlight of his day is an afternoon encounter at the capital’s Holocaust memorial. Slovakia declared independence from Czechoslovakia on March 14, 1939, and became a Nazi puppet state with a politician and Roman Catholic priest Jozef Tiso becoming the country’s president. Under his rule, the country adopted strict anti-Jew laws and deported some 75,000 Jews to Nazi death camps where some 68,000 perished.