Jan 16, 2008 / 13:00 pm
The disclosure of the Pope's speech that he intended to give at La Sapienza, brings with it an ironic twist. The students who were protesting his presence claimed that he had nothing to say to a secular institution, and yet, his speech was on that very topic.
The Holy Father's visit to Rome’s oldest university, which was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, was suspended after a group of professors and students threatened to disrupt the event with their protests.
"What has a Pope to do or say at a University? Certainly not to impose the faith on others in an authoritarian way, which can only be given to others in freedom," the Pope writes in his speech meant to be delivered at La Sapienza. Instead of speaking to the students and faculty, the address had to be published in the daily edition of L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.
In his speech, Benedict XVI points out that "La Sapienza was once the Pope's university but today it is a secular university with the autonomy that has been part of the nature of any university, committed only to the authority of truth."