Word: pope
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...Pope's opponents burst out in celebration at the east Rome campus when reached with the news of the cancellation. The Vatican released a statement saying it now viewed the visit as "inopportune" in light of protests they say could damage the Pontiff's image. But by backing out under pressure from his secular foes, the 80-year-old Pope may yet have the last word in this battle over the meaning of "reason" in today's intellectual debate. For the whiff of censorship toward a figure who is welcomed in myriad settings across the world - both for his position...
After three days of rising protests from students and professors, Pope Benedict XVI has pulled out of a long-scheduled visit Thursday to Rome's historic La Sapienza University. The surprise announcement Tuesday afternoon caps a high-stakes academic firefight between fiercely secular scholars and the former professor Pontiff that included a letter from 67 faculty members calling for the cancellation of Benedict's speech...
...Pontiff had been invited by the La Sapienza rector to speak at the annual ceremony to inaugurate the academic year. Over the weekend, unwelcoming banners were already appearing on campus saying "No to the Pope" and "La Sapienza Hostage to the Pope," and several left-wing student groups had promised widespread heckling for Benedict's arrival on Thursday. But perhaps most notable was the professors' letter, which was printed in the Rome daily La Repubblica, calling on school officials to cancel the papal appearance, which they said was "incompatible" with the university's secular mission...
...heresy trial against Galileo as "reasonable and fair." The famed Tuscan-born astronomer had been prosecuted for affirming that the Earth was not the center of the universe, but in fact orbited the Sun along with the other planets. Two years after the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's speech, Pope John Paul II expressed regret for how the Church had treated Galileo, whose heliocentric theories have long since been proven correct. The future Pope's words, reads the text of the professors' letter, "offend and humiliate us as scientists faithful to reason and as teachers who dedicate our lives...
...tussle over. And Benedict, with his rigorous academic background, is increasingly the focus of the attention. Indeed, the most highly charged moment of Benedict XVI's papacy thus far came in the gracious confines of a German university lecture hall. On that late afternoon of September 12, 2006, the Pope's discourse on faith, reason and violence at the University of Regensberg, where he'd once taught theology, was greeted with long and warm applause by the audience of academics proud that their fellow Bavarian intellectual had risen to the throne of St. Peter. Only later was the lasting significance...