Tensions rise ahead of Pope's visit to Rome university

Jan 15, 2008, 12:33 GMT

Rome - A group of students at Rome's La Sapienza university on Tuesday staged a sit-in at the campus' main hall in protest against Pope Benedict XVI's planned visit to the university later this week.

'The students assembled peacefully in the university Senate hall and have asked to talk to the rector (Renato Guarini),' a La Sapienza spokeswoman, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

Guarini had agreed to meet the students on condition that they ended their occupation of the buildings, the spokeswoman said.

The midday sit-in by the students came amid growing tension around the German-born pontiff's scheduled visit on Thursday when he is set to speak at the inauguration of the university's new academic year.

Catholic and conservative politicians have condemned the actions as a sign of intolerance, while opinions in the country's governing centre-left have been split, with some saying the pontiff's opponents have the right to show their dissent.

Leftist activist and Nobel literature laureate, Dario Fo, was quoted as saying on Tuesday that while he was 'perplexed' by the university's invitation to the pontiff, he should be allowed to speak on campus.

Fo told Rome-daily La Repubblica he was 'against all forms of censorship, because the right to speak is sacred'.

However, Fo said freedom of speech should be reciprocal.

'I don't think this church and this pope can be taken as a model in terms of freedom of expression,' he said.

Leftist students have threatened to disrupt Benedict's speech by playing loud rock music while a group of academics have signed a letter requesting that Guarini withdraw his invitation to the pontiff.

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 in their website.

In their letter, the 67 academics opposed to the pontiff's visit, mainly called on the university to revoke the 'disconcerting invite' to Benedict, whom they accuse of being a reactionary and an opponent of free-thought and research.

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, the then Cardinal Joseph 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.