CHURCH bells rang out across Germany yesterday as a surprised nation acknowledged the first German Pope in almost 1,000 years.

Cologne and Aachen cathedrals filled rapidly as believers gave thanks and exchanged information about the clergyman who is still a shadowy figure for many of his countrymen.

In his home town of Marktl am Inn on the Austrian border, revellers sang and danced in the streets, wept with joy and hung his giant portrait from the town hall. Many dropped flowers at the base of the portrait of their native son, now Pope Benedict XVI. “Benedict from Bavaria, we want to celebrate you,” they chanted.

“I am so proud,” Hubert Gschwendter, Mayor of the town of 2,700 souls, including 2,200 Roman Catholics, said. “I was completely stunned when I heard the news. It is so emotional that you can hardly express it.”

Believers packed the church on the main square to the last pew for a Mass celebrated by the local priest, Father Josef Kaiser. “I was stunned. I was speechless. I never thought it could be a German Pope,” Father Kaiser said after the service. “Ratzinger will be able to take the calm from his Bavarian home with him to Rome.”

Elsewhere in Germany, the new Pope is a divisive figure in the Catholic Church. As the main theological enforcer of Pope John Paul II’s papacy, he was the man who disciplined people such as Hans Küng, the liberal and highly popular Catholic theologian. It is his reputation as a polariser that overshadowed the natural chauvinistic enthusiasm of ordinary believers in Germany yesterday. The German Church is in the doldrums — barely 15 per cent of German Catholics attend Mass — and has been looking for a Pope that would be more tolerant of modern lifestyles.

“They are likely to be disappointed by Cardinal Ratzinger,” said Wilhelm Hofmeyer, who was heading yesterday evening for a religious service at a Protes- tant church in the Gendarmenmarkt in Berlin.

“He will have to make his first trip as Pope to Germany and address young people, but I am sceptical that he will have the personal authority to stop the drift away from church dogma. At heart, most of us are followers of Martin Luther.”

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