Pope Benedict said his visit to a Holocaust memorial site in Vienna later today was meant to show repentance about the Nazis' murder of millions of Jews in World War Two.
Before entering his plane in Rome, the Pope said he wants his visit to the monument on Vienna's Judenplatz "to show our sadness, our repentance and our friendship with our Jewish brothers".
The pontiff is due to arrive in the Austrian capital for a three-day stay, during which he will also visit a Catholic shrine tomorrow.
Pope Benedict also addressed criticism by Catholic Church activists in Austria who accuse him of devoting too little time to hear ordinary churchgoers' concerns during his stay, saying the visit was a "pilgrimage, not a political trip".
Austrians are mostly at least nominally Catholic, but two-thirds said in an opinion poll they were either disappointed by the church or indifferent to it.
The church is still feeling the ripples of a sex abuse scandal that forced a Vienna archbishop, Cardinal Hans Hermann Groer, to retire in the 1990s.
In 2004, the bishop of St Poelten quit after a scandal over pornographic pictures at a seminary.