Joaquín Navarro Valls, director of the Vatican press office, said that the Pope’s plane is scheduled to leave from Rome’s Ciampino airport at 10 a.m. on Thursday, Aug. 18, and arrive at the Cologne-Bonn international airport two hours later.
On Aug. 19, the Holy Father is scheduled to go by car to Bonn, and then later return to Cologne the same day.
Benedict XVI is scheduled to depart from Germany at 7:15 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 21.
The Vatican press office explained that the Pope’s detailed program in Cologne will be published later.
Vatican sources have said that the trip will include a visit to the Synagogue of Cologne. It will be the second visit of a modern Pope to a synagogue, after John Paul II’s stop at the Synagogue of Rome in 1986.
The trip to Germany will be Benedict XVI’s second outside of Rome. On May 29 he traveled to the Italian city of Bari, to close the National Eucharistic Congress.
