Vatican Visit by Austrian Rightist Sparks Protest

The Vatican’s millennial Christmas season opened in turmoil Saturday as police battled a crowd protesting a visit by Europe’s most provocative far-right leader, who got a papal audience in exchange for his gift of the seasonal fir tree for St. Peter’s Square.

In the only such violence to mar the Vatican’s Holy Year celebrations, Italian riot police used clubs and tear gas to prevent a stone-throwing group of 500 Communist-led demonstrators from advancing on the square during a tree-lighting ceremony attended by Joerg Haider of Austria.

The security was among the heaviest ever for a Vatican guest. It enabled Haider--a provincial governor whose anti-immigrant stance and qualified praise for Nazi Germany have alarmed leaders of other European countries and Israel--to maneuver through a day in Rome and two Vatican ceremonies without witnessing any of the acrimony his visit aroused.

Before the formalities, Haider seemed intent on provoking such hostility, as he several times took aim at his detractors in remarks quoted by the Italian press.

Pope John Paul II, apparently fearful of offending Roman Catholics in Austria, accepted the devoutly Catholic governor’s gift--an 81-foot-tall fir tree from his Carinthia province--and uttered not a hint of criticism during their half-hour audience.

Instead, as the meeting ended, John Paul instructed an aide to hand the governor’s delegation copies of last week’s papal World Peace Day message, which includes a general appeal against racist nationalism.

Five hours later, as dusk fell, dozens of police escorted Haider on the short walk from his hotel to St. Peter’s, where he listened to a brass band from his province and watched the tree lights go on. He urged 700 spectators to behold the towering pine as “a symbol of hope and justice” for the poor.

A quarter of a mile away, about 3,000 demonstrators shouted “Nazi!” and “Haider, hangman!” from behind police lines at the Castel Sant’Angelo, but the governor and his audience could not hear them.

Nor could Haider perceive the tear gas fired at the protesters, some wearing helmets, who tried to break from the crowd and march on St. Peter’s with a huge sign bearing pictures from the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz and the words “Never Again.”

A row of police vans blocked the broad Via della Conciliazione, and the marchers scattered in the face of a charging phalanx of riot police wielding batons and plastic shields.

In St. Peter’s, meanwhile, a teenage boy held up a sign reading “No thanks, Haider” as the governor spoke in Italian about his tree. Another spectator quickly tore down the sign.

The pope did not attend the Vatican-sponsored tree ceremony, but lights were on in his apartment above the square.

European countries and regions have taken turns donating Christmas trees for St. Peter’s since 1982. John Paul went out of his way Saturday to note that Carinthia’s offer to donate this season’s tree had been accepted in 1997, two years before Haider became governor.

Haider has been a pariah in much of Europe since his extreme right Freedom Party entered Austria’s national government last winter, prompting the European Union to put Austria under diplomatic sanctions for seven months.

Although he has since stepped aside as party leader, Haider remains a powerful and vocal populist. The advance announcement of his Vatican audience set off protests by the Israeli government, Jewish groups around the world and leftists in Italy.

Noting John Paul’s history of opposition to anti-Semitism, Israel warned that “granting honor to a man of this kind is liable to send a wrong signal and inappropriate message.” The World Jewish Congress called the meeting “a moral and historical failure” by the Vatican.

Amos Luzzato, head of Italy’s Jewish community, announced that he had nothing against the Christmas tree but suggested that the Vatican accept it without receiving Haider.

But Vatican officials said privately that canceling the audience under such pressure would have angered Austrian Catholics, who contribute heavily to the Holy See. Publicly, Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano said the Holy See “is open to all”--a reminder that the pope has met with such divisive leaders as Fidel Castro of Cuba, Augusto Pinochet of Chile and the late Ferdinand E. Marcos of the Philippines.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls hinted before the audience that John Paul might use it, the way he has meetings with other controversial figures, “to speak freely . . . about respect for human and Christian values.”

But the pope’s speech in German to Haider and his delegation of 250 pilgrims contained no such lecture--only some musings about the spiritual inspiration of trees. And Haider said no controversial subject arose during the pope’s brief private conversation with him and an Austrian Catholic bishop.

“We were warmly welcomed by the Holy Father, and he told us he was happy that the Christmas tree was coming from a country where people have strong faith,” the governor told reporters.

In other meetings with the press, Haider repeatedly taunted his critics, including Rome’s Jewish shopkeepers, who turned off their lights to protest his tree-lighting ceremony.

“If they want to save electricity, let them do it,” the Italian news agency ANSA quoted him as saying.

The visitor provoked another stir by accusing Italy of being soft on illegal immigrants. When President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi defended Italy as a humane society, Haider said the response was “typical of a left-wing politician,” prompting the Italian government to lodge a formal protest with the Austrian government.

Italy faces general elections next spring, Haider told reporters, “and therefore the climate is a little bit nervous. But it’s not our problem.”

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Times special correspondent Maria De Cristofaro in Rome contributed to this report.