Once again a Papal trip is being forecasted as a disaster

that is the most biased article I've ever read. Bar none. Great find. how does an editor look at that and say "OK. Print it"?

I liked the part where the Pope was criticized for planning Mass at ... a cathedral, of all the lame places.

"'Young people experience the church as dusty and inflexible, and it's about to lose the under-50 crowd completely,' said the group's chairman, Hans Peter Hurka."

That's funny. Most under-50's I know are ready to lose all of the Hans Hurka's completely. Please, Hurka, tell us a story about who is dusty and inflexible. Especially dusty.

Only 3 % turn out to see him? Using wikipedia's figures, that would be nearly 250,000. I think that's more than enough to forestall the possibility of an "empty plaza".

Hmm...how strange....the WYD 2005 was supposed to be "a disaster", the trip to Brazil was supposed to be "a disaster" too. Don't underestimate young people, Hans, and don't think that people of all ages will continue to feel the same way about Pope Benedict after they've realized that he's not the mean, cold man he was made out to be.

The typical BBC plan is hype up the Papal trip saying how awful it's going to be and in the case of Turkey how likely someone is to try to attack him physically.

Then when it's a great success, silence.
Thank goodness for blogs.

Apart from the Catholic press, I never remember seeing pictures of the Pope (JPII or BXVI)smiling, until the invention of the mighty blogosphere.

Crunching demographic numbers from Wikipedia suggests that, if all the Austraian non-Catholics completely ignore his visit, about 16th or 1/7th of the Catholics will also ignore it. Don't more than 1/7th of Catholics ignore Sunday Mass on a fairly regular basis, anyway?

As Austria is the home of both Mozart and Hitler, both of them powerful influences on Pope Benedict, I fear the press is not taking the side of the composer...

That 3% seems like a real good number....especially if they are devoted Catholics....

Funny how, when quoting the number of people expected to turn out to greet the Holy Father, the article then stated "No margin of error was given."

Hey Hurka, Ya'll come on down to Coppell Texas and see if you can find a seat for mass. Oh, you might be able to find one right there inbetween those 450 teens that regularly show up-- none of which are over 50, I promise, but you better hurry, pews fill up at least 20 minutes before mass starts, oh and by the way, you won't find any dust and you better be prepared to be flexible, this is teenagers we're talking about. And bring your earplugs they are pretty loud.

This is classic:
"Now, more than ever, our society needs the gospel," Schoenborn said, alluding to "some very difficult years."
So, what do they expect the Pope to preach and exemplify? The DaVinci Code?
As to those people who say they will ignore the Pope, I doubt it. Wait and see how many change their minds when he's close by...