The house in southern Germany where Pope Benedict XVI was born has been vandalized with obscene graffiti, police said.
Someone found the foot-high blue letters early Tuesday on the wall over the door of the house in the town of Marktl.
Authorities will not release the exact words, but "it was a defaming remark from the realm of the obscene," police spokesman Andreas Guske told The Associated Press.
He said the words were not specifically directed against the pope, who has been fiercely criticized recently for his role in what critics call a churchwide coverup of clerics' sexual abuse of children.
Pastoral assistant Ludwig Raischl told the DAPD news agency that the graffiti was removed after police took samples.
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