Pope set to face 'sonic siege' during visit to Rome university

Jan 14, 2008, 12:37 GMT

Rome - Students at Rome's main La Sapienza university plan to disrupt Pope Benedict XVI's planned visit to their campus later this week with blasts of loud rock music.

The group of left-wing physics students on Monday launched an 'Anti-Clerical Week' of events ahead of Benedict's scheduled arrival on campus on Thursday.

'In a university which should be ... a place of cultural growth, research and conscientious and secular criticism, La Sapienza Rector Renato Guarini has instead decided to invite Pope Joseph Ratzinger to inaugurate the academic year,' the students said on their website, referring to Benedict's name before his 2005 election.

Benedict as pontiff 'condemns centuries of scientific and cultural growth by affirming anachronistic dogmas such as Creationism, while attacking scientific free-thought and promoting mandatory heterosexuality', the students, who use the name, Physics Collective, said.

Featured events included screenings of a film on the life of Galileo Galilei - the Italian Renaissance scientist whose theories on astronomy provoked the ire of the Catholic Church - as well as debates on topics such as evolution and homosexuality.

The protests are set to culminate with a 'sonic siege' involving music played from loudspeakers mounted on a truck in the campus' main square during Benedict's main address, students said.

In his response the rector of La Sapienza - which during the student protests of the 1960s and 70s was often the scene of clashes involving leftists, rightists and the police - appealed for tolerance.

'Despite differences in opinion, Benedict XVI should be welcomed as a man of great culture and of profound philosophical thought, a messenger of peace and those ethical value that we all share,' Guarini said.

But Benedict's presence at the ceremony at La Sapienza which will also mark the 705th anniversary of the founding of the university, one of Europe's oldest, has also drawn criticism from a group of lecturers.

In a letter published in Rome-daily La Repubblica, the 67 signatories, which according to the newspaper included 'the best known members' of La Sapienza's Physics' faculty, called on the university to revoke the 'disconcerting invite' to Benedict.

In their letter the lecturers cited a 1990 speech made by Benedict when he was still a cardinal in which he allegedly justified the Catholic Church's actions against Galileo.

During the 1990 speech delivered in Parma, Italy, Cardinal Ratzinger had quoted Austrian-born philosopher Paul Feyerabend in which he said that the church's 1633 heresy trial against Galileo was 'reasonable and fair.'

In court Galileo was forced to recant his theories - later proved correct - that the planets, including the Earth, rotated around the Sun which was at the centre of the solar system.

In 1992, Benedict's predecessor as pontiff, John Paul II expressed regret for how the Galileo was treated by the Catholic Church.