The crowd will be the same but the star on the stage will be different. Pope Benedict begins his first international trip on Thursday and everyone will be watching his every move. The 78-year-old German goes to Cologne in his homeland for four days to conclude the Church?s World Youth Day, a sort of Catholic Woodstock that takes place in a different city in the world every two years. But this one will be different. It will be the first without the man who founded the event that draws hundreds of thousands of Catholic youth from the around the globe ? Pope John Paul.

While he seems to have shed some stage fright since his election four months ago, Benedict is clearly not as comfortable with the limelight as was John Paul, a former actor who relished a chance to bring a crowd of millions to its feet. ?Every pope has his own personality and one should not expect a copy of Pope John Paul,? Germany?s senior cardinal, Karl Lehmann of Mainz, told Reuters in an interview. ?But nor would Pope Benedict attempt to replicate him.? Still, while Benedict knows he can never mesmerise young people the way his predecessor did, he will have to build on John Paul?s attempts to draw more of them back to a Church diminished by dwindling attendance figures. 

According to statistics from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, the number of Christians in Western Europe will continue to fall in the next two decades while Islam will grow. Benedict was quoted as telling Vatican Radio in an interview to be broadcast ahead of the trip that he hoped it would provide a ?new impulse? for the Church in Europe. Some 800,000 young people are expected to attend the culminating event of World Youth Day on Sunday, when the Pope celebrates a mass on an open field. 

Philip PULLELLA