Pope Benedict XVI celebrated Mass in front of 70,000 people Monday in the famed German pilgrimage center of Altoetting and listened to a brief prayer for peace tied to the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The pope, on a sentimental six-day homecoming tour of his native Bavaria, confined his sermon to the Virgin Mary, Jesus’ mother, to whom the Altoetting shrine is devoted.
“This is the mother that generations have come to Altoetting to visit,” he said. “To her we entrust our cares, our needs and our troubles.”
Laywoman Walburga Wieland offered a brief remembrance of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
“We ask, five years after the terror attacks at the World Trade Center in New York, for peace in the world,” she said during the service.
The third day of Benedict’s trip took the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger out of the big-city environment of Munich, Germany’s high-tech center where he once served as archbishop, and into the Bavarian heartland of small towns and roadside shrines where he was born and grew up. The pope, relaxed and smiling, took his time shaking hands with people in the crowd, to their delight. He even paused to bless an infant.
Brother joins him
Benedict was joined during Mass by his brother, the Rev. Georg Ratzinger, retired choir director at the Regensburg Cathedral. The two were ordained as priests on the same day in 1951.
Benedict, who arrived in Munich on Saturday, left the Bavarian capital by helicopter for the short hop to the city, where thousands of well-wishers jammed sidewalks and squares.
People lined the route down which the “popemobile” traveled to the town, as church bells pealed to welcome Benedict’s arrival. He rode to the central Chapel Square, surrounded by church spires and the Chapel of Mercy, believed to date from 700 A.D.
The town is known for its wooden statue of the Black Madonna, which was first brought to Altoetting in 1330 and has since become a destination for pilgrims. The dark color comes from centuries of candle smoke.
The pope’s family made several pilgrimages during his childhood, which the pontiff has said are among his earliest memories.
Benedict, 79, also planned to make a visit to Marktl am Inn, where he was born, and to Freising, where he was ordained a priest. He will also visit Regensburg, where he once taught theology and spend time there with Georg, 82.
Plea for priests
Before leaving for Marktl Monday evening, Benedict led an evening prayer service at Altoetting’s basilica. Speaking to an audience of seminarians and others, he addressed the church’s need to attract more people to the priesthood.
“We know that the Lord seeks workers for his harvest,” the pontiff said.
“In the so-called Third World, in Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, people are waiting for messengers,” he said. “And in the so-called West as well, here in Germany and also in the expanses of Russia, it is true that the harvest could be large. Yet the people are lacking who are prepared to get down to God’s harvesting work.”
In the Altoetting crowd, many were excited about the chance to see their German pope.
Theo Bott, 59, said he likely wouldn’t see Benedict in Bavaria again and “that prompted me to come here” from Aschaffenburg, at the other end of the state.
“The message he brought fitted this place of pilgrimage exactly,” said Bott. “He knows how to enthuse masses.”
As for the lack of a longer reference to the anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington, he said that “Sept. 11 is a terrible day, but it would not have fitted into this ceremony” — a sentiment echoed by other pilgrims.
The visit was primarily “a pilgrimage for the Virgin Mary and for Benedict, also a farewell to his youth,” said Krista Mayer, 68.
Pilgrims had gathered in the Dultplatz, a square near the papal route, as early as 2:30 a.m. A beer tent was set up and open for business, with sausages sizzling on the grill. No beer was to be sold until the afternoon, after Mass had ended.
“There are some people who might drink two or three beers and then get rowdy. This is something that we want to avoid today because this is our only chance, because the pope probably won’t be back,” said Peter Winke, a representative of the Brauerei Hackelberg brewery. “The next pope will probably be African or Italian and won’t come to Bavaria.”