Then Cardinal Ratzinger is trying to justify punishing someone for disagreeing with the church. No matter how disrespectful Galileo was at the time, punishing him for his statements was wrong.

Much like other, more recent problems with the church, Ratzinger wants people to believe the church isn't all the bad while in reality it is quite immoral.

The protesters are right. He doesn't deserve the respect of speaking to the University.

Chuck, Providence, RI, USA

Communists always get their way. Anybdody who disagreeas with them must be shut up best to send him to a gulag. Somebody should remind these communist professors and their bullies the students that that the Berlin Wall has fallen and communism is dead maybe in Cuba and north korea where such tactics still work.

william vlasic, new york, usa

It's ironic and sadly telling that those who seem to have the greatest ignorance of the Church are university academics.

Ted, Rome, Italy,

Hurrah for the protesters!!! Is there anyone who has not noticed the profound shift in the Roman Catholic Church since John Paul II. He too was a man who discouraged any deviation from the inane and moribund doctrines which have held the Church back for many years. There was an air of excitement when John XXIII, started the changes when the II Vatican Council began. John XXIII was a visionary who saw the need for change and had the popes after him continued with that change there would be a completely and utterly different church today. It has been my experience as a Catholic that there is no dissent brooked and little if any questioning of doctrine. The Church needs priests, whether male for female, married and not married. Can the Church change under men such as these who will not allow laity to have a place in the decisions made for them? I, seriously doubt that any time soon there will be the likelihood of change within the Church. G-d help us all.

Nelson Robison, Reynoldsville , USA/ Pennsylvania

Bill of Glasgow
The website I ask you to visit needs a correction.

It should read: www.universal-flood.net

Jack J. Szpytman, Grosse Pointe Woods, MI. USA

Do we only ever get sane comments from UK residents? Pope Rat. is anti-science, anti-reason and, well, anti-anything that isn't catholic.
Religion is nonsense. There is not a shred of evidence for any of it and a huge amount of evidence that completely destroys its assertions and predictions (when will you learn?). Religion has no place in education and has been the avowed enemy of learning and reason since its inception. I hope the students have a really good PA for the tunes on Thursday. Crank it up guys!

Bill, Glasgow,

Congratulations to the protesters. I don't imagine they'll succeed in getting his visit cancelled, but all due respect for trying. We inhabitants of the real world need to take every opportunity to expose religious idiocy, and the undue respect accorded to it.

James Freeman, Cardiff,

“The scientists said they hoped the visit by the Pope on Thursday would be cancelled out of respect for the "secular nature of science" and the fact that the university was open to "students of every belief and ideology".”

So… Let me see if I got this right. The scientists are saying that the Pope’s visit should be cancelled because the University is open to “students of every belief and ideology”… Is there a touch of contradiction in that reasoning? It doesn’t sound like these supposedly enlightened scientists have great tolerance of diversity in belief or ideology, if it disagrees with their own.

Mark Anthony Mifsud, Msida, Malta

I researched the trial of Galileo when I was an undergrad at UNC-Chapel Hill over 30 years ago. I agree that Galileo was doing just fine with the Inquisition until he quoted Scripture to defend his views. He was intolerant of those who disagreed with him and as a scientist he had no need to try to prove his new discoveries with Scriptural "evidence." His hubris was his downfall, not his science.

Jack Nicholas, Syracuse, NY

What an absurd comment from Pier Paolo in New York. Totally nonsensical. He completely ignores, likely out of convenience for his own viewpoint, the many comments that Benedict XVI, and earlier Cardinal Ratzinger, has made in defense of reason and science. Many European secular ideologues are so filled with hate and betray a deep ignorance of history, sad to say. I have a priest friend in the States who is also a physicist, who would scoff at such stupid comments from this student of physics. By the way, is he aware that there are over twenty places on the moon named after Catholic priests who were astronomers? The papacy was an early supporter of astronomy and the sciences. Some scientists may despise Benedict and the Church but that is due far more to their adherence to the pseudo-religions of secularism and/or atheism rather than to the Church's position on science.

Arnold, Seattle, USA

As an Italian that studies physics in UK, I am very proud that some very important physicists are complaining about this absurd participation of the Pope to an official event in the La Sapienza University. This event is the inauguration of the Academic year, and this Pope (who is fiercely against science and the Enlightenment) is not welcome among the scientific community.

Pier Paolo, York

Pier Paolo Marchisio, York, UK