Anna Arco Notebook

pope Benedict XVI is coming home this Saturday for the first time since he exchanged cardinal red for papal white. To be sure, he visited Germany for World Youth Day in Cologne last year. but this is a special visit. which makes it very clear that Bavaria. not Germany, is home.
"Pope Benedict XVI in Bavaria". proclaim the white-and-blue posters of the Pontiff which are plastered on every church square in every village, town and city across Germany's largest and most independent state — and every village, town and city in Bavaria has at least one church.
Although Catholic Bavaria was not neglected by John Paul II, who visited in 1980 and again in 1987, Pope Benedict's outspoken fondness for the land of his childhood gives the six-day visit all the significance of a homecoming. His very itinerary echoes his Bavarian past. His first stop is Munich where he was archbishop, the second is Alttitring, a famous shrine to the Blessed Virgin near his birthplace and the third and last stop is Regensburg, where he taught and where his brother Georg still lives.
After a busy summer spent feeding and watering football fans. fighting football-induced traffic and trying to sleep despite honking horns and celebrating rowdies, Munich's residents are facing two days of a city-wide paralysis. While there has been some grumbling, Bavarians. on the whole. seem happy and flattered to have been thus singled out by their most famous compatriot. One Munich newspaper even reported that a number of women are so excited by the prospect of the Bavarian pope that they have asked to give birth in his presence.
Organisers for the two big papal Masses, in Munich on Sunday and in Regensburg on Tuesday, expect over 300,000 people at each one. A large chunk of the autobahn will be closed around Regensburg, a city of approximately 180,000 residents, in order to create parking for the coaches arriving with pilgrims from across the state. Bavaria has also borrowed 18 extra trains from other German states in order to accommodate the extra pressures on the public transport system in Munich. This should serve not as a traffic report, but as a way of putting the efforts going into this papal visit into perspective.
On an individual level Bavarians are making humble, but nevertheless heroic. efforts to see their Pope. Fr Sinha Roy, a former brewer turned priest', is leaving his parish of Tuntenhausen at two o'clock on Monday morning, with a coachful of parishioners, in order to he in Alttitting an hour later so that he can clear the security checks in good time and get some decent standing room. Others will be sleeping in their cars and marquees will be set up to provide provisional sleeping quarters for those who come early.
The security for the visit is intense. I received my ticket for Alttitting by registered post last Monday, after having sent the Diocese of Passau (once the largest diocese in the Holy Roman Empire) a copy of my passport, a signed paper promising to behave and a photo of myself.
Now, although I have the badge with my name and picture on it, I will still have to show my passport in order to prove that I am indeed Anna Arco. But I'm sure that it will be worth every minute of the hassle. In tact, I can't wait.
Meanwhile, as the grownups are becoming increasingly over-excited about Pope Benedict's visit, Bavaria's schoolchildren are celebrating his homecoming for another reason: the summer holidays have been officially extended by an extra day in his honour.