They were planted to honor one pope.Now they‘re being purged for another.
Environmentalists have criticized the action, but church and municipal officials are playing down the trees‘ significance.
Schoenleitner believes nature should be revered as much as faith and doesn‘t think trees should be sacrificed for an event that will last just a few hours.
During his Sept. 7-9 visit, the seventh foreign trip in his two-year papacy, Benedict will make a stop in Mariazell to mark the 850th anniversary of its founding.
"Environmentalists have already been calling" to express their displeasure, hotelier Klaus Kloepfer told the Austria Press Agency on Tuesday.
The four limes were planted to decorate Mariazell‘s main square for John Paul‘s first visit to the alpine country.
John Paul made two other trips to overwhelmingly Catholic Austria in 1988 and 1998.
He died in 2005.
"The church does not sacrifice trees," Paul Wuthe, a spokesman for the papal visit, told the Catholic news agency Kathpress.
Benedict‘s visit will be his first to Austria as pope, though the German-born pontiff was a frequent visitor as a cardinal.
Mariazell Mayor Helmut Pertl told the Kleine Zeitung daily he thinks the fuss is completely overblown.
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