MARKTLAM INN, Germany – An unassuming Bavarian village was transformed into a maelstrom of excitement yesterday as locals took to the streets to celebrate the elevation of Joseph Ratzinger, their most famous son, to the papal throne.

The residents of Marktl am Inn, between Salzburg and Munich, were stunned by the news that the man they affectionately know as “Ratz,” who was born in the village on April 16, 1927, had been chosen to lead the world’s Catholics.

“I know he was the favorite, but I would never have believed that a German could be chosen for such a role,” said Gertraud Becker, 62, a post-office worker. “I thought that Germans were just not liked in the world because of our history. Maybe he will draw a line under all that.”

Across the road, in the Winzenhorlein bakery, her sister-in-law, 48-year-old Gertrud Becker, was relishing the publicity and showing off her “Vatican bread” and Pope Benedict XVI chocolate cake. “Tomorrow we’re doing nougat-filled pope doughnuts,”she said.

“After all, it’s not every day we get a Bavarian pope – the last one was 950 years ago – and a Marktler at that.” In the archrival bakery next door, Roswitha Leukert was relishing in the rush on the “papal cap” doughnuts that her husband, Wolfgang, had hurriedly invented to celebrate the news. “Finally, the world has come to Marktl,” she said. “I suppose I’d better start going to church.”

Mayor Hubert Gschwendtner could hardly contain himself. After the announcement, he sent a fire engine through the town, calling people to gather and celebrate in the market square where he had laid on a brass band and free beer, and had invited the village gun club to fire blank rounds from their muzzle-loaders in salute.

“For centuries we have been asleep,” he said, “and suddenly we’re rewarded with a pope – it will take ages to sink in.” He pointed to the fax and telephone numbers of Pope Benedict XVI’s office on his desk. “I’m going to send him a note of congratulations, and of course invite him to Marktl at his earliest convenience.” He also produced a letter sent to him by the then-Cardinal Ratzinger in 1997, when he last visited the staunchly Catholic Marktl and was proclaimed an honorary citizen.

“I am proud and happy to have been born in a community … in which there is so much public spirit and lively cooperation,” the cardinal wrote.

Meanwhile, in the village guesthouses, the burning question was what they might cook for a visiting Bavarian pope, whose love of local cuisine – particularly white sausages, porridge, roast pork, and sauerkraut washed down with a beer – was such that he took his sister Maria with him to Rome as a cook. Asked whether Benedict would still drink beer, the mayor said through a chuckle: “He’s a Bavarian through and through. He says so himself.”

Press from as far afield as Japan and Mexico tried in vain to enter the three-story 15-room house on the market square where Benedict was born to Maria Ratzinger, a cook, and Joseph Ratzinger, a policeman, on Easter Saturday in 1927, and lived until he was 2.

Current owner Claudia Dandl, a 39-year-old agnostic homeopath, who bought the house for $220,000 six years ago, had reportedly fled the village, rightly fearing a press scrum.

About 40 miles away in the town of Traunstein, considered by the pope to be his “true homeland,” and where he was imprisoned by American troops in 1945, returning home on a milk cart, pupils and teachers at the seminary where he boarded and later studied for the priesthood abandoned their supper to celebrate the news with a champagne reception.

“We are incredibly moved,” said headmaster brother Thomas Frauenlob, standing beneath an oil painting of the new pope. “I’ve eaten with this man, and, God forbid, preached to him.”

Wendelin Holzner, 76, a retired textile worker, accused those who claimed the new pope was a willing member of the Hitler Youth, even though membership was mandatory, of trying to spoil the celebrations. “They are rumors being spread by his liberal opponents,” he said.

“They should just accept that he’s an ordinary German chap who drives a battered Mercedes and likes listening to Mozart.”