Returning from Africa, just landed in Rome on a sunny afternoon, the Pope would have exclaimed with journalists: "It's a beautiful day today."
This "imprudent" comment has raised worldwide concern and strong feelings and is fueling a growing controversy.
Some of the most significant reactions:
The Archbishop of Salzburg: "We reaffirm the full fidelity of the Church of Austria to Pope and we embrace him. But the question is, if by chance he does not want to regress the Church to an animist sect of sun worshipers. After this statement, the number of people who have requested to be removed from the tax records to support the Catholic Church has significantly increased."
Alain Juppé, former French prime minister and now mayor of Bordeaux: "at the moment when the Pope pronounced these words, it rained in Bordeaux. This counter-truth, next to the denial, showing that the pope lives in a state of total autism. This destroys, if you still need proof, the papal dogma of infallibility".
Margherita Hack, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics at La Sapienza said, "saying in no uncertain terms and with no clear objective evidence" that the weather is good today, "the Pope shows the well-known disdain for the Church of Science, which always fights dogmatism. What's more subjective than this notion of "beautiful"? On what evidence is indisputable experimental support that? The meteorologists and specialists in this field have not been reached to agree on the point during the International Meeting in Caracas. And now Benedict XVI, ex cathedra, expects to decide by this arrogance. It will soon turn to burning all those who do not agree entirely with the papal notion of a good and bad day?"
The Association of Victims of Global Warming: "How can we not see in this provocative statement an insult to all victims past, present and future of the vagaries of climate, floods, tsunami, drought? This acquiescence to the "day" shows clearly the complicity of the Church with these destructive phenomena which pretends to see the "providential" work of an avenging God, and punishment. And what is worse, this attitude will only encourage those that cause global warming, as will now be able to rely on the backing of the Vatican."
The World Council: "The pope pretends to forget that while the sun shines in Rome, part of the planet is plunged in darkness at night. Here's a sign of disrespect intolerable for vast portions of the world and a clear sign, if you still need proof, of the neocolonial eurocentrism of this German pope. "
The Directors of the American feminists Associations: "Because the pope wanted to say" what a fine day "using terms in which in the original sentence in Italian, is the masculine? Could very well have been using feminine gendered Italian words as "that 'beautiful' [bella] day", using an "inclusive" adjective because it does not decline to a different masculine or feminine. It 'clear that this Pope, who has already condemned the non-sexist formulae of baptism and blessings ( "In the name of the Creator, the Redeemer and the Sanctifier"), shows at every turn his commitment to the most retrograde principles. It is "discouraging that in 2009 he continues to poing backwards."
The League of Human Rights: "Such statements can only deeply hurt all the people who have a vision of reality different from that of the pope. We think in particular to people in hospital, immobile, or imprisoned, whose horizon does not stretch beyond four walls, and also to the victims of rare diseases whose conditions render them incapable of perceiving the state of the weather. Here, it is evident, the desire of discrimination between "good", would exclude all (at the expense of minorities, of Afro-Americans and any concept of 'inculturation'), and those who by choice or inability to perceive things differently. We propose a demonstration judicial complaints on grounds of discrimination against this pope."
Alberto Melloni, the School of Bologna: "We see clearly the profound difference between this pope, introverted and closed in himself and surpassed in his world, which is limited, compared with the father who "opened the Church to the world", Pope John XXIII who everyone wanted to bring their children to embrace the Pope, John XXIII with a programme coinciding with the impulse of the Spirit to reconcile, that recent popes have tried to suffocate."
Beppe Severgnini, a journalist: "The Pope is the Pope Punto. But one can not but think with a little 'homesickness' that John Paul II would have said the same words maybe in Romanesco (Roman dialect) And waving the white zucchetto to the faithful."
L'Osservatore Romano published a slightly different version of the exact words of the Pope, "He might have said, according to L'Osservatore R., "Some might say that it is nice weather". But the audio and video journalists have denied the softened version. Many also attacked the ingenuity of Fr. Lombardi who, despite being on the side of the Pope did not intervene to prevent that statement or just better clarify the meaning.
Remember, you read it here in English first.
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