NEWS ABOUT BENEDICT

Unfortunately, what the world is seeing so far about the La Sapienza case is through partial uncontested wire-service reports such as this one, which according to the Yahoo log, has already made the rounds of various news outlets around the world:



University staff and students
protest against papal visit


Rome, 15 Jan. (AKI) - Academics and students at one of Italy's most prestigious universities want a visit by Pope Benedict XVI to be cancelled because they oppose his position on the astonomer Galileo.

Pope Benedict XVI is to scheduled to visit La Sapienza University in Rome on Thursday.

But according to Italian media reports, 67 professors and lecturers have signed a letter saying the Pope's views on Galileo "offend and humiliate us".

They said it would be "incongruous" for the pontiff to open the university's academic year and want his visit to be stopped.

Their letter referred to a remark by Benedict, when he was still Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, that the Catholic Church's trial of the Italian astronomer was "reasonable and just". [This is disgraceful! - for ADNkronos to perpetrate the dissenters' error, an dobviously not bothering themselves to research it, nor to read the Iralian media which - divided as it is - has pointed out more than abundantly in previous days that the dissenting professors committed a greivous sin of mis-attribution and therefore, condemning without reason!]

They claim the pontiff condoned the 1633 trial and conviction of Galileo for heresy after he argued that the earth revolved around the sun.

"In the name of the secular nature of science we hope this incongruous event can be cancelled," said the letter addressed to the university's rector, Renato Guarini.

La Sapienza physics professor Andrea Frova, author of a book about Galileo, and other academics at the university claims the church still tries to exercise its influence on scientific progress today.

Frova told the Italian daily, La Repubblica, inviting Pope Benedict to the university ceremony was like inviting a "Martian" and that he should not be allowed in. [This, from a professor in a university that hosted the far-out Raelians who claimed years ago that they had succeeded in producing human clones!]

In a separate move students at La Sapienza have begun a week-long "anticlerical " protest and have hung banners on the walls of university buildings.

The official programme has been changed so that Pope Benedict will present a standard speech - rather than a keynote speech at the university ceremony.

Vatican Radio said the protest at La Sapienza had "a censorious tone".

Pope Benedict was in charge of Roman Catholic doctrine in 1990 when, as Cardinal Ratzinger, he commented on the 17th-Century Galileo trial. [Yes,but did you morons even bother to check out what he actually said?]

Galileo, a devout Catholic, was forced to renounce his findings publicly.

Fifteen years ago Pope John Paul II officially conceded that in fact the earth was not stationary. [That was not exactly what he conceded, obviously, but to phrase it that way makes the Church look really stupid, even an intellectual in his own right like John Paul II.]


The following, later DPA report, at least, reports the mis-attribution about Galileo correctly.

Sit-in at La Sapienza

Rome, Jan. 15 (dpa) - Around 100 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 university rector Renato Guarini who met the students in the afternoon said there was "bitterness" at the Vatican with the way certain students and lecturers were trying to disrupt the pontiff's visit scheduled for Thursday.

"The Pope is a man of culture and great thinker" who should be allowed to have his say, Guarini said in an interview with private news television news channel SkyTG24.

But the rector also said students and staff opposed to the Pope's visit would be able to voice their issues, provided they did so peacefully.

"I told the students they will be able to assemble on Thursday in front of the Literature and Philosophy faculty and discuss those matters dear to them," Guarini 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 confirmed the invitation still stood.

The Vatican did not comment on Tuesday's protest, but on Monday its broadcaster, Vatican Radio, said attempts to prevent Benedict from speaking at the campus amounted to censorship.

The midday sit-in by the students came amid growing tension around the German-born pontiff's scheduled visit 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.

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," students opposed to the visit who use the name, Physics Collective, said 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.