Pope honoured by grandmother's birthplace in Italy

(Nov.09, 2011) A north Italian town where the Pope Benedict XVI’s maternal grandmother and great grandmother were born, conferred on Wednesday an honorary citizenship on the German Pontiff. A delegation from the town of Natz-Schabs in the Italy’s Alpine region of Trentino-Alto Adige, travelled to Rome for the ceremony in the Vatican, during which they presented the Pope with an official certificate of honorary citizenship. Natz-Schabs, which has some 2,500 inhabitants, celebrated its new honorary citizen earlier on Oct. 22. Bishop Ivo Muser of Bolzano and Bressanone presided at the blessing of a commemorative plaque in the village of Rasa, where the Pope’s great grandmother, Elisabeth Maria Tauber, was born on Dec. 9, 1832, and his grandmother, Maria Tauber-Peintner was born on June 29, 1855. Both died in Rimsting, Baveria, Germany, where they had transferred after the Pope’s grandmother married his grandfather, Isidor Rieger.
The largely German-speaking region was formerly part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until its annexation by Italy in 1919. In 2010, when the Christmas tree from Luson was installed in St. Peter's Square in Rome, Pope Benedict told a group of pilgrims from Alto Adige that his grandmother and great grandmother were born in the village of Rasa.