Day Three-Part Two Marktl am Inn

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Pope Benedict XVI passes in front of the house he was born in (on left) in Marktl am Inn Sept. 11 in southeastern Germany.
A bakery across the street takes advantage of the pope's visit with pastries that included jelly cookies with crosses (above), fudge with crosses on them and papal tiaras made from bread and sugar.
The pope's birthplace early in the afternoon of Sept. 11. He arrived at 7 p.m. and spent about 30 minutes greeting people around the house before moving on to Regensburg.


After the scene in Altotting settled down some and many of the editors cranked out stories in the Vatican press room, we had planned to take a quick trip through Marktl am Inn, a tiny farming town where you can see the house that Benedict XVI was born in. He only lived there for two years before his parents relocated the family to Tittmoning in 1929 (they then moved to Auschau am Inn in 1932 and then Traunstein in 1937). Nevertheless, we were only about 15 minutes from Marktl am Inn and decided to do a quick driveby to snap some pictures of the church he was baptized in and of the house before the pope made his schedule drivethrough a few hours later.

By the time we arrived there, things were still quiet there but the police was out en masse (as they have been the entire trip. It as been an impressive sight.). We soon learned that our press pass was not going to be enough to give us access to the church. Because the town is so small, they said reporters had to apply for a special pass for this event. I requested this and other passes when I got my original accreditation, but while I got the regular credential, they did not have my name on any pool lists. In an act of Providence, one of our editors ran into another reporter friend she knew who happened to be covering the event for television in Bavaria. She knew one of the heads of the police there and secured for us a police pass that got us behind the barricade and onto the tiny main street where the pope would drive down in front of the house (we had to give him back the pass as soon as we were in, as he was afraid of one of us abusing it and getting him in trouble... nevertheless, he was a hero).

And so we waited... and waited... and waited. After wating for four hours, the security helicopters finally decended on the town and the crowd of several thousand became electric (2,000 tickets were allotted for the barricaded areas around the house in the town of 2,700 and many more people lined other streets near the route. There was a beautiful choir and orchestra just across the street from the house that had the crowd singing church hymns and contempory Catholic songs until the pope's arrival.

Around 7 p.m., Benedict finally arrived in a motorcade and, at the end of the street that leads to his house, got out and began walking up the street, greeting the people and a special dignitary section. He then went into the beautiful St. Oswald's Church to meet up with his older brother, Father Georg Ratzinger, inside the church, and they prayed in front of the baptismal font where Benedict was baptized. Then Benedict moved back into the popemobile, which drove about two blocks to the house. At that point, he stepped out of the popemobile again and he came out to greet people. He did not go in the house (it is currently under major renovation) but walked in front of it a little and shook hands. Then he went back into the popemobile, it rounded the corner and headed out of the town to catch a ride to Regensburg.

This was a much more energetic crowd than in Munich and was one of the highlights of the trip. Once the scene died down, we got on our bus, headed back to a nice traditional Bavarian dinner of pork, potatoes and cabbage iin Altotting and wrapped up the night around 11 p.m.