Poland gave German-born Pope Benedict a warm but sparse reception this evening as he began a visit to honour his predecessor John Paul and help banish lingering ghosts of the Nazi occupation.
Pope Benedict XVI greets people after arrival at Warsaw airport
The new conservative government turned out in force to welcome him at the airport and thousands of waiting Poles burst into cheers and applause when Benedict (79) started addressing them in clear, slightly accented Polish.
There were noticeably fewer people lining the streets into Warsaw than the hundreds of thousands who used to turn out for John Paul's triumphal visits to his homeland. Police estimated about 70,000 came out to see him pass in his white popemobile.
In deference to Polish and Jewish sensitivities, Benedict will avoid speaking German for most of the four-day trip, except when he prays at the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz on Sunday.
"I have come to follow in the footsteps of his life, from his boyhood until his departure for the memorable conclave of 1978," Benedict said of John Paul in his greeting in Polish.
Continuing in Italian, the language of the Vatican, he said the trip was "no mere sentimental journey...but rather a journey of faith, a part of the mission entrusted to me by the Lord".
His trip will take him to cities and shrines dear to John Paul and end in southern Poland at Auschwitz, where 1.5 million people, many of them Jews, were killed during World War Two.
Reflecting the sensitivity about his background, he stressed before leaving Rome that he would go to Auschwitz primarily as a Catholic honouring the victims.
Benedict, who was involuntarily enrolled in the Hitler Youth during the war and briefly served in an anti-aircraft unit, will also meet survivors and Jewish leaders at Auschwitz.
"Together we pray the wounds of the past century will heal, thanks to the remedy that God in his goodness has prescribed for us by calling us to forgive one another," he said.
Welcoming Benedict, President Lech Kaczynski cited his long years of work alongside John Paul as "the greatest model of cooperation between a German and a Pole".
The Pope, more reserved than his charismatic predecessor, smiled and waved as the popemobile glided through Warsaw's streets. At one point, he stopped to take a child in his arms and bless him.
He bowed his head in respect as the motorcade slowed while passing a memorial to the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto uprising, a desperate attempt by Jews to resist deportation to death camps.
Lucjan Balewski (77), who came from Poznan to see the Pope, said he admired Benedict as a theologian but did not have the same feeling for him as for John Paul, who died on April 2nd, 2005, after 26 years at the Vatican.
"The last Pope was ours, this one, too," he said. "But this time it is our choice to make him ours."