Zest, Joy, One Can Only Be Delighted

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Pope hopes trip will bring spiritual renewal for Europe
Frances D'emilio
Associated Press
Published August 15, 2005

VATICAN CITY -- Pope Benedict voiced hope that his upcoming trip to his native Germany for a youth gathering will spur a new European wave of faith to counter what he described as a spiritual "fatigue" on the continent.

In the interview with Vatican Radio's German edition that was broadcast Sunday, the pope also said, "Providence wanted my first trip abroad to take me to Germany."

Benedict will fly to Cologne on Thursday to begin a four-day visit for World Youth Day, a Catholic jamboree of rallies and religious services with young people. His predecessor, Polish-born John Paul II, had announced the choice of Cologne for the event, which is held every couple of years in a different part of the world and draws hundreds of thousands of participants.

He said the goal of the event was "a wave of new faith among young people, especially the youth in Germany and Europe."

In Germany, "many Christian things occur, but there is also a great fatigue, and we are so concerned with structural questions that the zest and the joy of faith are missing," the pontiff said.

"If this zest, this joy, to know Christ would come alive again and give the church in Germany and Europe a new dynamic, then I think the aim ... would be achieved."

Vatican Radio provided an English translation of the 15-minute interview, which was conducted in Castel Gandolfo, the pope's summer palace in the Alban Hills outside of Rome.

Benedict voiced hope that Cologne would spur the "old continent" to look beyond the "missed opportunities in European history" to "rediscover the truth, purity and greatness which gives us our future." He did not say what he believed Europe had done wrong.

During the trip to Germany, Benedict will meet with Muslim and Jewish groups, and he will visit a Cologne synagogue wrecked in the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom and rebuilt in the 1950s.

Of the German pilgrimage, the 78-year-old Benedict said: "I would not have dared to have initiated it. But if the Almighty God decides to do something like that to you, then one can only be delighted."

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