The daily Thüringer Allgemeine reports that Dieter Althaus, the premier of the state of Thuringia, has met with local officials for preliminary consultations about the security arrangements that would be necessary for a papal visit.
Althaus met with Pope Benedict in April, and invited the Pope to visit the German state.
Thuringia, in east-central Germany, is at the center of a region in which Martin Luther lived and worked, where the Protestant Reformation first flourished, and it remains heavily Lutheran today.
The Vatican has not issued any indications of a plan for another papal visit to Germany.
Since his election as Roman Pontiff in April 2005, Pope Benedict has traveled to Germany twice: in August 2005 for the World Youth Day in Cologne (a visit that had originally been scheduled by Pope John Paul II and in September 2006 to visit his native Bavaria.
In February of this year the apostlic nuncio in Berlin, Archbishop Jean-Claude Perisset, disclosed that a papal visit to Germany might be possible in November 2009, when the nation will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.
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