One year ago, I had just experienced the excitement and the exhaustion of covering World Youth Day in Cologne for the Register. With an extra day on my hands before my flight home, I wondered how I might spend my final day in Germany. I hoped to relax.

Birgitta, the hotel clerk, suggested that I visit the city of Bonn to take in some of the sights. She invited me to join her for a cup of coffee in one of the city’s restaurants in the afternoon.

Unlike previous World Youth Days, the event in Cologne was actually spread out between three cities — Düsseldorf, Cologne and Bonn. During my stay, I had visited both Düsseldorf and Cologne, but had not yet visited Bonn. So, early on the Monday morning following the final papal Mass at Marienfeld, I made the trek to the Hauptbahnhof (the main railway station). There I boarded a train heading south.

Looking at the green fields along the way, I longed to be home in Minnesota. Yet the Bonn excursion proved the perfect way to end a week filled with people and pilgrimage.

Bonn is a delight. One of its first surprises, for me, was its sprawling array of botanical gardens showcasing plants, trees and flowers from around the world. I also toured the home where Ludwig von Beethoven was born.

But the most memorable moments of my Bonn side trip came when I rounded a corner and entered the city square, the Münsterplatz. There, just outside a Catholic church near the edge of the plaza, sat two enormous human heads.

Not real human heads. Concrete ones. Wearing helmets.

The heads, which were positioned at odd angles to one another, looked as if they had just fallen off a pair of immense statues. But no corresponding sculpture was anywhere to be seen.

Tourists stood smiling, having their photographs taken beside the heads. It was one of the most arresting and surreal sights I have ever seen.

“Modern art?” I wondered as I snapped a photo myself. “Whose heads are they? Why are they sitting outside of a Catholic church?”

Moments later I stepped inside the church to learn that the concrete heads commemorate Sts. Cassius and Florentius, the city’s patrons. The Collegiate Church of St. Cassius and St. Florentius, known today as the Minor Papal Basilica of St. Martin, is built on the site of the graves of these two martyrs.

Cassius and his companion Florentius, said to belong to the Theban Legion, were two of nine Christians who died at the command of co-Emperor Maximian Herculeus in 303.

St. Helen, the mother of Emperor Constantine, is said to have founded the chapel built over their tombs in the fourth century. Their relics were transferred to the present church in 1166 and rediscovered in 1929.

Beethoven Prayed Here

The basilica, which sits near the city’s center, was teeming with visitors inside and out. Many were young people still dressed in the colorful T-shirts, bandannas and I.D. tags identifying them as World Youth Day pilgrims.

The week prior, the basilica had hosted thousands of energetic youth from around the world for various evangelistic, catechetical and discipleship activities. Now tourists made their way through the sanctuary in silence, taking in the beautiful stained glass and other sensory reminders that this is a reverent house of God.

I learned that the church began as a small chapel in the late Roman period, and only gradually grew into the first large church in the Rhineland. Later it would be pointed out as one of the most important examples of medieval architecture along the Rhine River.

Work on the Romanesque church that stands today began around 1050. The structure underwent various changes through the middle of the 13th century, including the addition of a cloister in the 12th.

Beethoven, whose place of birth is a few blocks away, is reported to have played the church’s organ as an assistant court organist.

Largely decorated in the Baroque style, the basilica offers many prompts to prayer, contemplation and admiration.

In the central nave is a larger-than-life statue, in bronze, of St. Helen holding a cross. It is said that the citizens erected the statue in 1668 in gratitude for her founding of the chapel.

Twenty-two pairs of paintings depict events from the Old and New Testaments, suggesting themes of redemption and healing. The basilica brims with side altars, reliefs and statuary too numerous and sumptuous to enumerate.

At some point I noticed that visitors were passing in and out of a door. Following the “in” crowd, I discovered that the attraction was a crypt below the main sanctuary and altar.

Inside the crypt, on a stone pedestal between two pillars, sat a large bronze reliquary containing the relics of the martyrs whose heads are depicted outside in concrete.

I was pleasantly surprised to find Jesus Christ present in the Blessed Sacrament, exposed within a monstrance in the chapel, and took advantage of the opportunity for prayer.

I prayed in thanksgiving for World Youth Day and the marvelous events of the previous week. I prayed in thanksgiving for the many people I had met and the stories I had been able to write. And I prayed for a safe return trip home to my wife and children.

German Rebirth?

Later, over apple juice and coffee, Birgitta told me what it was like to be an observer of World Youth Day.

“There was something about you and all of the World Youth Day pilgrims,” she said. “Even when your luggage was lost, or you were stressed or tired, you were always happy and smiling.”

Birgitta recounted that she had grown up Catholic but wasn’t practicing the faith. I explained to her that what she was seeing in everyone was Jesus Christ. It was Christ who was giving the young people their joy.

“During these days, I feel I’m being drawn back to the Church,” she said.

Over the course of World Youth Day ’05, I had heard similar stories from youth and the reaction of their host families to the events of that week.

I encouraged Birgitta to return to the Church — and silently prayed that World Youth Day might have a similar impact on the country as a whole. No doubt countless other attendees prayed the same thing that week.

A year later Pope Benedict XVI was back in Germany — via a groundbreaking interview on German TV. Was this a sign of answered prayers to come? Let’s not be afraid to hope so.

Senior Writer Tim Drake is based in St. Joseph, Minnesota.