POPE Benedict XVI has cancelled a scheduled speech at Rome's most prestigious university after protests by students and professors over the Church's views on science threatened to overshadow the event.
The protests had begun with a petition by 67 professors who portrayed the Pope as a backward theologian who put religion before science.
After resisting calls from protesters to scrap the visit to La Sapienza university, the Vatican said the Pope
had decided to postpone the trip.
It is the first time within living memory that a papal visit within Italy has been cancelled.
The protesters cited a speech the Pope gave nearly two decades ago, saying it showed he would have favoured the Church's 17th century heresy trial against Galileo for teaching that the Earth revolved around the Sun. The Pope's supporters denied that.
Opponents said they do not want the German-born pontiff at the university because he is "too reactionary" and they are against his views on abortion, homosexuality and medical research.
Professors from the medical faculty had signed a petition calling on the rector, Renato Guarini, to cancel the visit and they have been joined by hundreds of students.
Protest organisers had said that they would disrupt the visit by playing dance and garage music at full blast from huge speakers that went up outside the university.
Galileo infuriated the Vatican in the 17th Century with his theory that the Earth revolved around the Sun – contrary to Church teachings. He was tried for heresy as part of the inquisition by Pope Urban VIII and sentenced to house arrest.
Yesterday, in the wake of an occupation of the university by more than 300 students, Domenico Giani, the Vatican's chief of protection, held an emergency meeting with the rector and interior ministry officials.
One Vatican insider said: "The tension was getting too much and there were real security fears. It's amazing because the Pope has been to Turkey, which was considered even more dangerous.
"He went there in a bullet-proof car and wore a bullet-proof vest – yet he can't even visit a university in the centre of Rome."
The debate drew unusual allies for Pope Benedict. Dario Fo, a Nobel prize winner and an outspoken critic of the Church, defended the Pope's right to speak.
"I'm against any form of censorship because the right to (free] speech is sacred," the writer told the daily newspaper La Repubblica.
Some students staged a sit-in yesterday, occupying the offices of the chancellor. They declared an "anti-clerical" week and hung banners protesting against the Pope's visit.
