Intolerant Sapienza

Italian President Giorgio Napolitano is neither a latter-day papist nor a born again Christian. Far from it!

The lay President of Italy, nevertheless, described as a manifestation of intolerance the attitude 67 professors and a number of students from Rome’s La Sapienza University which was responsible for the cancellation of a visit by the Pope to that University.

Napolitano wrote a letter of support to the Pope saying that the threat of demonstrations was inadmissible and incompatible with the climate of freedom and dialogue that should mark a university Let’s back track a little bit for those who did not get the full story.

The visit was planned for Thursday, but a group of professors and students signed a letter protesting the visit by a Pope whom they claimed is "hostile to science." On Tuesday the protesting students occupied the rector's offices to demand the right to demonstrate within the university campus on the day of the Pope's visit.

The Vatican press office reported on Tuesday evening that "it has been considered opportune to postpone the event," which had been planned "by invitation of the rector." The University, which claims to be the largest in Europe, was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII and became independent in 1870.

The protesting Sapienza professors objected to remarks that the than-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger made about the church's 17th-century condemnation of Galileo Galilei. They quoted him quoting another author defending the church's condemnation. The Austrian philosopher who was quoted had said that the trial was "rational and just." The learned professors forgot to point out that Cardinal Ratzinger had distanced himself from the author's remarks which he described as "drastic." In fact, in the speech, he had said, "Faith does not grow from a resentment and refusal of rationalism, but from its basic affirmation."

Andrea Frova, a professor of physics and one of the organizers of the professors' letter of protest, told the Italian newspaper Il Giornale that he and his colleagues were "offended by the fact that a pope hostile to science" was invited to give a major lecture at a formal University event. The professor said it did not make sense "to entrust the inauguration of our academic year to a foreign head of state who also is the head of the Catholic Church."

The Rector of La Sapienza is quite naturally of a different opinion. Prof Renato Guarini said he had awaited Benedict XVI, a theologian and professor and "messenger of peace," to live "a moment of high culture" and an "interchange of ideas that would be fruitful for the entire university community."

It is very ironic that part of the academic staff and students of a University with the title of Wisdom behave in such a blinkered, unwise and intolerant way. Isn’t a University a place of dialogue between contrasting ideas? And since when is a boycott a sign of dialogue? What kind of open minded attitude are they communicating to students when they try to shut up those with whom they do not agree?

Giorgio Israel, a Jewish mathematician and professor at the university, noted in L'Osservatore Romano his surprise "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 a university in Rome." Or is this just one other manifestation of the secularist brigade which is proving to be more fundamentalist than the worse religious fundamentalists?

On Wednesday the Vatican published the speech that the Pope had prepared. The following notes based on a despatch of the Catholic News Service shows how blinkered the La Sapienza professors were. "What should the Pope do or say at the university? Certainly, he must not try, in an authoritarian way, to impose on others' faith, which can be given only in freedom."

The Pope wrote that his role in speaking at a university that includes believers and non-believers, is to encourage professors, researchers and students "to seek the truth, the good, God" and to not allow power, technology or selfish interests to silence consciences or belittle those seeking meaning in their lives.

In the prepared text, Pope Benedict acknowledged that church people have not always been right about everything. "Various things said by theologians over the course of history or put into practice by church authorities have been shown to be false," he said, but the example of the saints and the Catholic Church's influence on the development of humanism and of various cultures "demonstrates the truth of this faith in its essential nucleus."

Interacting with those who do not believe, the church is dedicated to promoting a search for truth and the common good, a search it believes can be found fully only by recognizing Jesus Christ as Saviour, the Pope said.

It is legitimate to disagree with the Pope's words but it is shameful and bizarre to try and prevent him from saying them.