German-born Pope Benedict leaves for Austria on Friday to pay tribute to Austrians killed by the Nazis and encourage the country's Church which is still living in the shadow of a sex abuse scandal.The main purpose of the three-day visit -- his first trip to another German-speaking country outside his homeland -- is to mark the 850th anniversary of the Austrian shrine of Mariazell, one of Europe's most important sanctuaries dedicated to Mary.
But the visit has wider ramifications as he will discuss global issues in talks with the diplomatic corps of Vienna, home to groups such as the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Shortly after he arrives on Friday morning, he will briefly pay tribute to victims of the Holocaust, killed after his native Germany annexed Austria in 1938, by praying at the memorial for Austrian victims of the Shoah in Vienna's Judenplatz.
Some 65,000 Austrian Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Before World War Two, Austria's Jewish community numbered some 200,000 and was one of Europe's most vibrant. There are about 10,000 Austrian Jews today.
In 1998 the local Church put a plaque on a nearby building in Judenplatz reading: "Today, Christianity regrets its share in responsibility for the persecution of Jews and realises its failure."
Benedict, who has made good relations with Jews one of the hallmarks of his papacy, last year visited the former Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz and publicly asked why God was silent when 1.5 million victims, mostly Jews, died there.
CHURCH SCANDAL
The Austrian Church is still feeling the effects of a sex abuse scandal that forced the late archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, to retire after allegations that he had molested a schoolboy 20 years earlier.
In 2004, the bishop of St Poelten resigned after a scandal involving pornographic pictures at a seminary.
"The wounds (of the Groer scandal) are still felt," said Father Federico Lombardi, the chief Vatican spokesman.
"A visit by a Pope who is spiritually and culturally close to the Austrian people is a sign of encouragement for a Church that has gone through great difficulty."
Austria, like many affluent countries in Western Europe, has seen a decline in Church attendance and religious life in recent decades.
A recent poll in a daily newspaper said a majority of the people of Austria, which is nominally about 72 percent Catholic, said either the Church had disappointed them or that they were indifferent to it.
Austria is also a stronghold of the grassroots dissident Catholic group We Are Church, which wants the Vatican to ordain married men and to give women a greater role in the Church.
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