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Students Flock to Pope's Wednesday Audience After Speech Cancelled over Protests

By John Connolly

ROME, January 16, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - It was announced yesterday that a scheduled visit by Pope Benedict to La Sapienza University had been cancelled due to the rowdy protests of a contingent of students who argued that the Pontiff was "anti-science." Previously the students had announced their intention to disrupt the Pope's scheduled speech by blasting rock music over loudspeakers.

The Vatican cancelled the Pope's visit to the university, which was started by a pope in 1303, following a break-in and sit-in by 50 students in the university rector's office. Vatican spokesmen said it was "considered opportune to postpone the event," which had been planned "by invitation of the major rector."

Students of La Sapienza opposed to the protests, however, responded by flocking to Benedict's Wednesday general audience at Paul VI Hall on January 16 as a show of solidarity to the Pontiff. They displayed banners that read "If Benedict doesn't come to La Sapienza, La Sapienza goes to Benedict," and "Students with the Pope."

A professor from La Sapienza has also responded to the protests, and has written an article accusing the protestors of being bigoted intellectuals who have a personal dislike for Pope Benedict XVI.

Giorgio Israel, a Jewish mathematician and professor at La Sapienza, wrote in L'Osservatore Romano that the creed of openness to other viewpoints has been suspended toward the Pope, based on an incorrect and extraordinarily loose reading of a speech the then-Cardinal Ratzinger gave at La Sapienza in 1990.

"[This attitude] is particularly surprising since Italian universities are supposed to be places open to any kind of position, and it makes no sense that only the Pope is denied access," he said. "[It] has been explained by Marcello Cini - one of the intellectuals opposing the Pope's visit - in his letter to the University's Dean. What Cini regards as 'dangerous,' is the fact that the Pope may try to open a dialogue between faith and reason, to reestablish a connection between the Judeo-Christian and the Greek tradition, and that science and faith may not be separated by an impenetrable wall."

"It is surprising," Israel said, "that those who have chosen as a motto Voltaire's famous phrase, 'I don't agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,' oppose themselves to the Pope pronouncing a discourse at the university of Rome."

"I condemn the acts, the declarations and the behaviours that fuelled an unacceptable tension and an atmosphere that is not worthy of a civilised and tolerant country such as Italy," said Prime Minister Romano Prodi in a press conference. "I therefore express my regret for Pope Benedict XVI's decision and I express my solidarity to him, asking him once again to follow the original programme. No voice in our country must be kept down, let alone the Pope's."

The protestors involved in the sit-in presented a letter to La Sapienza's rector signed by both students and professors in which Benedict was accused of being opposed to science. The letter asked for the invitation to the Pope to be rescinded because his presence would be "incongruous." This claim was based on a speech Benedict gave there in 1990, in which he clarified the purpose the Church had in mind in convening the Galileo trial, while saying that he disagreed with the ultimate ruling in the infamous case.

Israel wrote that the letter by the protestors "is just an expression of a feeling against the person of the Pope himself." He went on to call such a biased and selective reading of a speech, which defended the rationality of Galileo's discoveries, "a shame and a professional failure."

The letter specifically objected to Benedict calling the trial method (and not the result) used in the Galileo affair "reasonable and fair." The letter said that those words "offend and humiliate" academics. The letter failed to mention that Benedict said that he disagreed with the ruling of the trial later in his speech.

The address "could well be considered, by anyone who read it with a minimum of attention, as a defense of Galilean rationality against the skepticism and relativism of postmodern culture," said Israel.

"But I am afraid that here intellectual rigor has very little to do [with their motivations] and that the intention is to build a barrier at any cost," Israel said. "[They] have never expressed a word of criticism against Islamic fundamentalism or against those denying the Shoah. This is just a part of the secularist culture that has no argument, so it demonizes, it does not argue as a real secular culture, but creates monsters."

"The opposition to the Pope's visit," Israel continued, "is not motivated by an abstract principle of secularism. The opposition is of an ideological nature and has Benedict XVI as its specific target for speaking on science and about the relationship between science and faith, instead of limiting himself to speak only about faith. This is why the threat against the Pope is a tragedy from a cultural and civic perspective."

Academics have long been accused of a dogmatic intolerance for any viewpoint that does not coincide with their own. In the United States, actor Ben Stein is making a documentary called "EXPELLED: No intelligence Allowed" in which he exposes university thinkers who have lobbied to have colleagues fired for their personal beliefs against Darwinian evolution theory.

"The scientists and educators in this film who are being kicked around and whose lives and are being destroyed by a cadre of elite 'antitheist' scientists aren't Hollywood actors - they are real people, who have dedicated years of their life the pursuit of knowledge, and the pursuit of scientific evidence, no matter where it leads," write the producers on the film's blog. "These are not folks who have devoted their lives to chasing the almighty dollar, or to pursuing fame and celebrity. They are better people than that. They receive relatively very little for their dedication and demanding, hard work."

See the Pope's 1990 speech at La Sapienza:
http://ncrcafe.org/node/1541

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