Pope Benedict: proud to be part of Tyrol a “land made by Angels”

Did you know that Pope Benedict XVI’s maternal grandmother was originally from Northern Italy? At the end of the Wednesday General, in the Paul VI audience hall, Pope Benedict XVI was awarded the honorary citizenship of Natz-Schabs, a small town in the Autonomous Province of Bolzano, in Northern Italy’s Alps. It was not simply an institutional recognition but one warranted by family ties. In fact, Maria Tauber-Peintner, Joseph Ratzinger’s grandmother was a native.

Thanking the delegation for the honour bestowed upon him, in an entirely unscripted address, the Pope reminisced about how as a child he would listen to his mother’s memories of the land known as the Tyrol.

He said: “South Tyrol is a special country and is rooted in my heart through the stories that I heard from my mother. I never knew my great grandmother nor my grandmother - my grandmother died when I was three – but I heard many of her stories. Above all, that throughout her life, she was nostalgic for South Tyrol and never really integrated in Bavaria. During her last illness she said: "If only I could get a bucket of water from my homeland, I would surely be cured”. She never did recover, but her whole life she took the water of her native land, she had a hard yet full and rich life. Thinking of this I am reminded of another little story. As a girl, my mother worked for a family from Kufstein, and there she made a friend, who then married a baker, I myself as a child even met him. He was kind to my mother and would often say: "Maretl you must remember one thing: the Tyrol was made by the angels! "[dialect in the original]. And my mother kept this as a kind of testament which she then passed on to us. She was convinced, in her inner heart, that it was true.

And then, in 1940, when I was 13, for the first time the three of us children, we went on a cycling tour to the North Tyrol and we could see that it was really true that is had been made by the angels. Then, in the fifties, I went to South Tyrol where I could feel the special closeness of God which is expressed in the beauty of these lands. But not only through Creation, it was beautiful because men have responded to God: if we think of the Gothic towers, the beautiful houses, the warmth and the kindness of people, the beautiful music, we know that men responded, and from this collaboration - between the Creator, his angels and men - a beautiful land was born, a land of extraordinary beauty. And I am proud and happy to be part of it, one way or another”.

Hence the wish of the Pope so that the South Tyrol remains as it is, that "the nature, creation and life of men” continue to form “a single melody”, that faith is the “bearer of joy and help to overcome difficult situations".

Mayor Peter Gassser presented the Pope with the honorary citizenship. Already on October 22 last the local community had celebrated the event with a memorial day during which a plaque in memory of two women was dedicated. In fact, the forecourt was named after Pope Benedict XVI. 12 cities (in Germany, Austria and Italy) have already bestowed a similar honour on Cardinal Ratzinger and then Benedict XVI. Among them his birthplace Marktl am Inn.