Pope”s hometown celebrates native son

MARKTL AM INN, Germany – Overnight the local brew known as Weideneder Ale was transformed into Marktler Papstbier. Brioche at Luekert’s Bakery was dunked in sugar and renamed Papst Mitre. And tea shop owner Eva Zeberer rose by 8 a.m. to produce a potion of herbs fit for a papal offering: “Benedict XVI Tee, the drink of great energy and power.”

“I wanted to do something,” Zeberer said with a good-natured grin, adding that her sales pitch was inspired by a gush of goodwill and the worldly desire to make a little cash from curiosity-seekers overrunning the birthplace of former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the first German pope in centuries.

“Marktl is not very big but, really, it is something to have the pope from here,” said Zeberer, 38, a mother of five and a lifelong Catholic baptized in the waters of the local church in the nearby Marktplatz.

Germans may be divided on the conservative teachings of their suddenly famous native son, but few doubters could be found Wednesday in the Alpine towns of southeast Germany where Ratzinger, the former cardinal of Munich, once preached and prayed.

Newspapers, in eye-popping four-inch type, claimed Benedict XVI as a son of Bavaria, a man of Munich. In nearby Traunstein, the quiet town where the 78-year-old pontiff spent his adolescence, older churchgoers described him as special priest and friend whose papacy seemed too good to be true.

“We couldn’t believe it,” said Lotte Namberger, 62, as she left an evening service for the new pope at St. Oswald’s Church in the heart of Traunstein. Namberger met the future pope 50 years ago when she was 12 and Ratzinger was celebrating his first mass below the golden crucifix in the church.

Six jovial, white-haired beer drinkers raised their glasses in homage at the same hour, across the square, that others were on bended knee. The crowd at Beim Hansl restaurant couldn’t quite bless the pope’s brand of religious conservatism but they wished him well.

“We’re proud of him, but he’s not with the times,” said Johann Aumuller, a retired banker. “I feel the church is staying too long in the same spot. He needs to look at how women are treated in the church … and he needs to think of the second- and third-world church.”

“Even among our families we talk about the need for change,” said Josef Estermaier, 72. “I have to be hopeful.”

At St. Michael’s Seminary, where Ratzinger studied as a youth and visited as a Vatican cleric, the mood was buoyant. Father Thomas Frauenlob, the school’s director said, “We did what should be done. … We had Mass and then we had the champagne.”

Beermaker Wolfgang Bohm said he went to bed Tuesday trying to find a way to pay tribute to the best of Bavaria – the pope and beer. Most Germans could appreciate his quest for something akin to a holy ale, Bohm said as he looked at the crowd gathered outside a beer stand he set up near the town church.

“Papstbier,” Bohm said, touching a brown bottle with a freshly printed label. “I think you’d have to say it’s worthy.”