Germans’ warm reception to Pope Benedict’s visit to his native Bavaria last week, coupled with the broader trend toward recognizing the religious underpinnings of Europe, are signs that the secularism of Europe is on the way out.

The pope’s message, so warmly embraced by his Bavarian audience, was, according to the Christian Science Monitor, a challenge: “Europe needs to rethink the thesis that secularism and economic progress go hand in hand.” This rejection of secularism—and the implied revival of religion that surely accompanies it—is at the heart of this particular pope’s ambitions.

There are already signs of that revival’s success today. According to Karsten Voigt, coordinator of German-American relations at the Foreign Ministry, the decline in church attendance has stopped; in one state, the number of young churchgoers is rising.

Politicians, traditionally opposed to religious interference in government, are also showing support for the pope’s movement. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is trying to insert a reference to Europe’s Christian heritage—clearly, a Catholic heritage—into the EU constitution. This is coming from the leader of a nation with more theologians in office than any other Western nation.

German philosopher Jurgen Habermas recently made the shift from the secularist position. In his 2004 essay he wrote, “Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization.” He added, “To this day, we have no other options. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter.” That identification of Christianity as the foundation of the West is gaining steam in Germany.

It is ambitious for the pope to expect a metamorphosis of this magnitude in a nation—but if any nation can undergo such a profound change in its character, it is Germany. Historian Luigi Barzini observed the national character of Germany as similar to that of the Greek sea god Proteus, able to assume different forms, to make fundamental changes quickly—an observation backed up by Germany’s history.

Plus, the rejection of secularism the pope seeks, and the choice of Germany as its starting point, has its roots in the Holy Roman Empire—at which Germany has been the center before. Going beyond a simple rejection of secularism, the revival of a religiously unified Germany driving a Catholic Europe is the real motivation behind his message.

The timing of this effort to revive religion is particularly intriguing since there is perhaps nothing more capable of drawing Europe together than the rising tensions between Islam and Catholicism—a crisis given life by Pope Benedict’s recent address that stirred such a hostile reaction among Muslims. Nothing could serve to unite the Continent more rapidly than to see Islamists waging a war on Christianity in Europe. And what are Europeans seeing on that front? Even after the pope’s apologetic statement, the supreme leader of Iran urged protests against the pope. Muslim militants have threatened the pope’s life, burned churches and shot people—in one case killing a nun. If Europeans didn’t view Islam as being violent when the pope made the inference that Islam has violent roots, perhaps they do now that bullets have flown in response. Religion may serve to unite Europe and polarize it against Islam at the same time.

There is still yet a religious divide in Germany: About 26 million of its citizens are Roman Catholics, with a comparable number of Protestants—even Chancellor Merkel herself is a Protestant. Last year, 400,000 people visited Hanover for the opening of the 30th annual German Protestant Convention. In the pope’s quest to remove secularism—and ultimately to combat the rise of Islam—he must take another natural step: bring the daughter churches back into the fold. This was a primary goal of Pope John Paul ii while Pope Benedict xvi, then Cardinal Ratzinger, was still prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. It is still a primary goal of the Vatican today.

The pope’s words aren’t just about the dismissal of secularism in Europe. The pope knows that religion can be the primary unifying force in all of Europe—and he is prepared to work hard to bring that about.