The Pope, or a university?
The answer's here.
The protests are set to culminate with a 'sonic siege' involving music played from loudspeakers mounted on a truck in the campus' main square during Benedict's main address, students said.
Who's silencing dissent? The Pope, or scientists?
Sixty one Italian scientists have signed a letter protesting against a planned visit this week by Pope Benedict XVI to Rome's Sapienza University because of his stated views on Galileo.In a letter to Renato Guarini, the university rector, the scientists said the visit was "incongruous". The signatories include distinguished physicists such as Andrea Frova, author of a study of Galileo's persecution by the Church, and Carlo Maiani, the recently appointed head of the Italian National Council for Research or CNR.
The letter said scientists felt "offended and humiliated" by a statement made in 1990 by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the modern descendant of the Inquisition - suggesting that the trial of Galileo for heresy because of his support for the Copernican system was justified in the context of the time.
Oh, boo hoo. Poor scientists, offended and humiliated by something that happened four centuries ago.
Such brave freethinkers!