KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Aug. 18 (UPI) -- Security was on high alert Thursday as Pope Benedict XVI was in Cologne, Germany, to celebrate World Youth Day.
Roughly 12,000 personnel and a NATO airplane secured the region on the first day of the papal visit to the festival, which started Tuesday and goes on until Sunday.
The Airbus 320, a chartered Alitalia aircraft, touched down on the runway of the Cologne-Bonn airport at 11:54 a.m. Shortly after the pope, dressed in white, stepped out of the plane, rough winds blew off his cap -- the Holy Father smiled and left the plane bare-headed. He stepped on German soil at 12:06 p.m.
The pontiff was greeted by several hundred young Catholics with rhythmic clapping and "Be-ne-detto" chants. He did not, as some expected, kiss German soil.
The first to shake hands with the successor to John Paul II was President Horst Koehler, who approached the pontiff after he exited the plane. Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and his wife waited half-way on the red carpet.
"Holy Father, welcome to your home, welcome to Germany," Koehler said. "That's how it goes since days," the president said, when his speech was interrupted by chants and clapping celebrating the pontiff.
An estimated 500,000 young pilgrims are gathered in Cologne to give the 78-year-old pope another boisterous, colorful welcome. Larger-than-life portraits of John Paul II and Benedict XVI were hung on building fronts Thursday overlooking the square in front of the city's massive cathedral, where the pope will address the crowd later during the day. He will also board a cruise ship to sightsee on the Rhine River.
World Youth Day is the biggest event to take place in Germany in years: Sunday's final mass, held by the pontiff, will attract an estimated 800,000 people, officials say. Nearly 7,000 journalists from all over the world are covering the event.
And it's much more than numbers: Benedict XVI is the first German pontiff in nearly 500 years -- he was born Joseph Ratzinger, in Marktl am Inn, a small town in Bavaria. It's the pontiff's first visit abroad and the first to his native country since he took office four months ago. When Ratzinger was elected pontiff, the German daily Bild, known for its flashy headlines, titled "We are pope!"
Celebrations on Wednesday, however, were dampened the by the killing of Brother Roger, 90-year-old leader of the Taize ecumenical community. He was stabbed during a prayer service in France on Tuesday, allegedly by a mentally disturbed woman.
The event's security is topic of much discussion after recent terrorism attacks in Egypt and London.
Organizers had to handle a first critical situation late Wednesday, when masses of pilgrims headed home after the festival and poured into Cologne's main train station, temporarily overcrowding it.
"From 10 p.m. on, we had to occasionally close all access to the train station," a Cologne police official told Deutsche Welle. "The crowds inside were unbelievable."
A dozen people were hospitalized because of exhaustion and circulation problems, German news channel N24 said. The situation turned normal only after 2 a.m.
Officials said they are better prepared to face potential security problems for the pope's visit.
"Everything that is humanly possible has been done to safeguard the pope," Winrich Granitzka, security expert of the World Youth Day, Thursday told German news channel Phoenix.
A NATO airplane will secure Cologne's downtown airspace, which Thursday was made taboo for overflights. The NATO plane, equipped with the modern AWACS reconnaissance system, can detect aircraft via long-distance radar and communicate with friendly planes to back them in air combat.
The Swiss Guard, the Vatican Gendarmes and Germany's Federal Criminal Office are all deploying personnel to safeguard the pontiff.
Traffic will virtually shut down in Cologne during the pope's several trips inside the city. Four bridges the boat will pass have been closed off. Federal police will line the river near spots where the pontiff's boat closes in on the banks of the river. Several streets in downtown Cologne are taboo for private traffic, including the route to the main train station.
Two small emergency and two larger, long-distance helicopters of the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, are ready to touch down anywhere in the city, officials said.
Fearing hidden bombs, officials had manholes sealed off. A division of roughly 30 bomb-sniffing dogs constantly hunts for explosives.
Officials are also concerned when the pope meets with crowds later in the week. Benedict will preside over a Saturday night vigil in a park outside Cologne with a crowd expected to be in the hundreds of thousands, followed by a huge open-air mass Sunday that will draw an expected 800,000 people. Several thousand security personnel are deployed to secure the events.
In what is possibly the most meaning-laden part of his trip, Benedict will become the second pope to enter a synagogue (in Cologne) on Friday, nearly two decades after John Paul II made a historic visit to a Rome synagogue. Benedict is also due to hold talks with leaders from Germany's Muslim community.
Jayne Ogwel, 30, came from Kenya with a group of 12 Catholics to see the German-born pontiff.
"I am not worried about security," she told UPI in a telephone interview earlier this week. "I am more worried about a cold I caught here because it was so chilly when we arrived."
On Wednesday, however, chilly Cologne warmed up. When the pontiff's plane touched down, sunny skies and temperatures of up to 84 degrees warmed the region.
"It's a perfect day to see the pope," a young Catholic told N24.
