Italian scientists Friday reacted angrily to Pope Benedict XVI's assertion that researchers are tempted by "easy money" at a time when universities and research institutes face budget cuts."To talk about easy money at a time when young Italian scientists are at risk of losing their jobs ... the pope is totally cut off from reality," said astrophysicist Margherita Hack in the leading Italian daily Corriere della Sera.
Speaking to a delegation of Catholic scientists at the Vatican on Thursday, the pope said science sometimes forgot its goal of contributing "to the progress of all humanity."
"Easy money, or even worse the arrogance of substituting oneself for the Creator, sometimes plays a decisive role," he said, adding that "science cannot develop ethical principles."
The criticism, in line with frequent papal warnings over the dangers of scientific overreaching, came in the backdrop of street protests against proposed budget cuts by the centre-right government of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"The pope is very poorly informed. Easy money is found elsewhere," wrote physicist Carlo Bernardini, pointing to researchers' "miserable salaries" and "job insecurity."
"If being arrogant is wanting science to be open to research, then I am arrogant," said Maurizio Gelati, a biologist and practising Catholic.
Others however, like geneticist Bruno Dallapicola, praised the pope for setting limits to research.
"A scientist should have a big margin of freedom, but in the face of fundamental issues like cloning, respect for human life and economic interests, this freedom should be monitored," Dallapicola wrote in La Stampa.
But mathematician Piergiorgio Odifreddi, also in Friday's La Stampa, retorted: "Scientists do not want to play God, it's the Church that always claims to speak in the name of a metaphysical authority."
Early this year Benedict cancelled a planned speech at Rome's La Sapienza university after dozens of professors and students protested his presence at the secular school.
The academics also recalled that the pope, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1990, defended the heresy trial of 17th-century astronomer Galileo as "reasonable and just."
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(Source: AFP)