Half a million people turned out to welcome home Pope Benedict in Munich at the weekend and the sterner his words became, the louder the cheers, writes Derek Scally in Munich.
With 17 events over six days the German pope has made clear that he is a man on a mission, a prophet in his own land, and that this is no sentimental journey back to his Bavarian heimat.
He warned 250,000 Mass-goers yesterday morning that the western world was "hard of hearing" towards God and obsessed with "scientific reality".
Later, he appealed directly to parents to pray with their children at home and to bring them to Mass.
"You will see that it isn't lost time but that it holds the family together and gives it focus," he said.
Bavarians have made clear to the rest of Germany that this is their papal visit and their chance - ahead of Oktoberfest next week - to celebrate in front of the world's media their own individual Bavarian identity.
"Of course I have always remained a Bavarian, even as the bishop of Rome," said Pope Benedict, visibly over the moon at being home.
At the same time, a minor drama was playing out behind the scenes of the first papal Mass in the Munich fairground. A panicked priest called the police when the combination safe containing 150,000 hosts refused to open.
As officers approached with a pair of bolt cutters, the door sprang open on its own. "Perhaps divine intervention opened the number combination lock," joked Fr Siegfried Kneissl later, after his pulse had returned to normal.