The pope was born on April 16,
1927 as Joseph Ratzinger in the small Bavarian town of Marktl, which
today has a population of around 2,700 people.
Marktl, which
lies just a few kilometres from the Austrian border, had conducted a
long campaign to grace the skies on the side of a Lufthansa plane.
Lufthansa regularly names its planes after German towns or cities.