Pope's university visit canceled

VATICAN CITY -- Following a letter of protest signed by 67 professors and demonstrations by students, Pope Benedict XVI canceled a planned visit to Rome's Sapienza University. He was to speak at the opening of the academic year Jan. 17.

Jan. 14, students began a planned four days of protests against the papal lecture. Fifty occupied the rector's office Jan. 15, the day the Vatican announced the pope's visit would be canceled.

Andrea Frova, a professor of physics, told the Italian newspaper Il Giornale that he and his colleagues were "offended ... that a pope hostile to science" was invited to give a major lecture at a formal university event. Frova cited Benedict's latest encyclical Spe Salvi ("On Christian Hope") as setting science and faith in opposition.

In Spe Salvi, Benedict wrote that the hope science offers humankind can be "deceptive." He wrote that science "can also destroy" humankind "unless it is steered by forces that lie outside it."

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