Pope in emotional arrival on Bavarian trip

Pope Benedict made an emotional return to his Bavarian homeland yesterday, saying his first visit since being elected head of the Roman Catholic Church 17 months ago filled him with memories.

The 79-year-old Pope, who has hinted this might be his last visit home, said he hoped his trip would help revive the Christian faith throughout Germany and regretted he could not visit other parts of the country.

But his first words reflected his deep attachment to Bavaria, a traditionally Catholic region with a character and culture that sets it off from the rest of Germany.

"I've come back to my homeland and my countrymen to visit some places that have had a fundamental meaning in my life," he said after arriving from Rome.

"Inside of me, so many memories of my years in Munich and Regensburg are coming back, memories of people and events that left deep traces in me."

Church bells in Munich rang as his plane from Rome landed and crowds in the main square cheered as they saw him emerge to be received by German President Horst Koehler, Chancellor Angela Merkel and Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber.

During his six-day trip, Benedict will mainly visit Munich, where he was archbishop from 1977 to 1982, and Regensburg, where he taught theology from 1969 to 1977. He will also stop at his birthplace Marktl am Inn and a shrine to the Virgin Mary at Altoetting.

Over 5,000 police were deployed around the Bavarian state capital, where many streets were blocked off for his afternoon drive through the city, prayers at its main square and talks with political leaders at the old royal residence. On the plane from Rome, Benedict was asked if he would also go to Berlin on another visit. "I am an old man and I don't know how much more time the Lord will give me," said the pope, who visited Cologne last year for the World Youth Day there.

Asked about the wide-reaching secularisation seen in Germany, as in other European countries, he said there was "fatigue everywhere" but added: "German Catholicism is not as tired as some people think."

Cardinal Karl Lehmann, head of the German bishops' conference, said before Benedict arrived that fewer Catholics were leaving the Church and more coming back in the past two years. "People are asking more about the faith," he said.

Munich police have issued strict guidelines for the faithful coming to see the pope, including bans on glass bottles, prams, umbrellas and folding chairs. Police began on Monday hauling away bicycles found locked along the roads the pope will use.

His role as stern defender of the faith, much criticised by many German Catholic activists, has mellowed since his election and even once-critical media now take a more relaxed view.

Greeting Benedict, Koehler praised his attachment to his Bavarian roots but also reminded him that Germany is the home of the Reformation that divided western Christianity.

"Holy Father, especially in Germany, the country where the Reformation began, many Christians wish for ecumenical understanding and, if I may say it so plainly, ecumenical progress," said Koehler, a Protestant.

Benedict has pledged to work for Christian unity, but Germany's Protestants have complained that he has ignored them and only reached out to the Orthodox churches.