GERMANY: The legacy of Pope Benedict's return to his homeland might be different than many expect.
A rise in church attendance or an increase in vocations, as many religious hope will result from World Youth Day in Cologne, can only be measured much later.
The real revolution in Cologne was listening to a world figure so self-evidently, self-confidently German - not a given by any means - speaking to his countrymen in their mother tongue in a groundbreaking fashion.
"God bless my dear Fatherland," said the Pope after arriving in Cologne on Thursday. Fatherland - "Vaterland" - belongs in the lexicon of German words that have never recovered from Nazi hijack and abuse.
Yet the word, no doubt carefully chosen, didn't raise an eyebrow when uttered by the pope. He was even more clear before his departure at Cologne airport on Sunday evening, when he spoke of the shame and responsibility of Nazi Germany's atrocities in the 20th century.
"During these days here, thank God, it has become quite evident that there was and is another Germany, a land of singular human, cultural and spiritual resources. I would like that these values, thanks to this event, shine out anew around the world," he said, adding that the positive memories the young visitors had of the country were, for Germans, a "sign of hope".
"Life-changing" is how many of the hundreds of thousands of young visitors described their time in Germany. That the organisational infrastructure sometimes collapsed under the mass of visitors may even have worked to their advantage.
"Cologne main station seemed sometimes to shudder with the masses of people, a little apocalypse," said Gilles (22) from Dourdan. "As a Frenchman I had feared that the German organisation would be perfect, but it wasn't. We are brothers."
The attitude of young Germans in Cologne was even more interesting. This was their pope, literally speaking their language. They sang German songs and marched through the streets hoisting proudly the German national flag, things usually left to football fanatics and extreme right-wing groups.
"The choice of a German pope was a special historical case without equal in its chance to improve Germans' relationship to themselves and to their own country," said Mr Eckhard Fuhr, author of the recently-published Where We Find Ourselves. The Berlin Republic as Fatherland.
His book develops further the argument that the German government's return to Berlin in 1999 triggered a slow "normalising" of the German national identity. Pope Benedict could act as a catalyst to this process, he says.
"In the past we had a problem of over-rating ourselves, now we have the tendency to overdo how small, weak and crisis-ridden we are," said Mr Fuhr. "But a global figure like the pope, chosen by others to head a veritable institution like the Catholic church, has a huge influence on how Germans look at themselves."
The German view of themselves is inextricably linked to how they perceive themselves to be viewed from abroad. Germany's popular Bild newspaper, which splashed the new pope's selection with the headline "We are Pope!", told its readers after the pope's arrival: "The time in which Germans were despised and viewed with mistrust by the people of Europe are finally over."
The pope's visit, and his back-to-basics sermon on Sunday, broke little new ground for Vatican watchers, but was priceless for Germany's image at home and abroad.
The government has been working furiously with PR agencies to "rebrand" Germany for next year's World Cup Finals. If the recent days in Cologne are anything to go by, the papacy of Benedict XVI will go a lot further.