Cologne, Germany - Pope Benedict said on Sunday he hoped his four-day visit to his homeland had shown the world "the other Germany" of cultural and spiritual resources in contrast with the shameful evil of the Nazi period.
Benedict made the comment in the final address of his trip, during which more than a million people saw him, most of them young people who had come from around the globe for the Roman Catholic Church's World Youth Day.
"These days spent together have given many young men and women from the whole world the opportunity to become better acquainted with Germany," he said at the departure ceremony before he was to board a plane for Rome.
"We are all well aware of the evil that emerged from our homeland during the 20th century, and we acknowledge it with shame and suffering," he told the audience at the airport, including Germany's President Horst Koehler.
"During these days, thanks be to God, it has become quite evident that there was and is another Germany, a land of singular human, cultural and spiritual resources," he said.
The 78-year-old Pope made his comments two days after his historic visit to a synagogue once destroyed by the Nazis, where he said Christians and Jews must join forces so the "insane racist ideology" that led to the Holocaust never resurfaces.
The Pope served briefly in the Hitler Youth during the war when membership of the Nazi paramilitary organization was compulsory, although he was never a member of the party and his family opposed Hitler's regime.