Pope Benedict's mass in his homeland has been moved due to high demand and
will now take place in Berlin's Nazi-built Olympic Stadium.
The original venue, the Charlottenburg palace in Berlin, was ruled out because
ticket requests had surpassed its 40,000 capacity for the September 22 mass,
the Berlin archdiocese said.
The stadium has a 74,000-seat capacity.
Despite extensive renovations in 2004, the Olympic stadium's architecture still reflects its origins under Adolf Hitler, who used the 1936 Summer Games to promote a resurgent Germany on the world stage.
African-American track star Jesse Owens won four gold medals in prized track and field events, a blow to Hitler's theory of white racial superiority.
Benedict was a member of the Hitler Youth when membership was compulsory and was later drafted into the German anti-aircraft corps.
His four-day visit from Sept 22-25 comes as a rising number of German
Catholics are quitting the church over allegations that priests sexually
abused children for decades.
Some 180,000 German Catholics left the Church in 2010, a 40 per cent increase
from the previous year and the first time the number of parishioners
quitting the Church surpassed those leaving the main Protestant churches in
postwar Germany.
The visit will be Benedict's third trip to Germany since becoming pope in 2005.
The visit will be Benedict's third trip to Germany since becoming pope in 2005.