On Saturday, Köhler had welcomed Benedict XVI at the Munich airport with military honors as the head of the Vatican State. He was setting foot on Bavarian soil “with great emotion,” said the Pope. Merkel and Bavarian Minister President Edmund Stoiber (CSU), as well as Munich’s archbishop, Cardinal Friedrich Wetter, and the chairman of the German Conference of Bishops, Cardinal Karl Lehmann, also attended the welcoming ceremony. The Tegernsee Gebirgsschützen, of which the Pope is an honorary member, fired the salute.
After his drive from the airport to downtown Munich, Benedict XVI led a prayer in front of the Mariensäule [Column of the Madonna] on Marienplatz. Visibly moved, he sang along with the Ave Maria and the Bavarian hymn. Joseph Ratzinger had prayed at this column thirty years earlier when he became Archbishop of Munich, and then once again when John Paul II called him to Rome to be the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
At the beginning of the Pope's visit there had been fears about traffic chaos, but they didn’t pan out. “It would be a dream for the police if everyone at large events behaved with such discipline,” said a police spokesman. However, according to the police only about 150,000 people came on Saturday to welcome the pontiff. Organizers spoke of around 250,000.
On Monday, Benedict XVI continued his trip with a visit to the largest German Marian pilgrimage site in Germany, Altötting, and to his birthplace, Marktl. During the night from Saturday to Sunday, unknown persons had thrown two paint pouches at the façade of Ratzinger’s birth house. A painter quickly removed the splotches, however.
Three hundred and fifty thousand people are expected at the mass in Regensburg on Tuesday; Ratzinger once taught theology in the university town. Wednesday is reserved for the private portion of the visit. He will fly back to Rome on Thursday, after a prayer at the Freising cathedral, where Benedict XVI was consecrated to the priesthood fifty-five years ago.
Source: “Mahnung zur Ehrfurcht” [“An Admonition to Reverence”], ZEIT online, September 10, 2006.
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