Youth Lectures Vatican During Mass With Pope

The silence from the Vatican was deafening Wednesday after a student speaking at a mass with the pope criticized a Vatican greeting for an indicted former Italian premier.

One newspaper called the incident Tuesday an unprecedented “slap” at Pope John Paul II.

The student departed from a Mass program in St. Peter’s Basilica to deliver, before John Paul, a lecture criticizing a Vatican greeting given to ex-Premier Giulio Andreotti.

Andreotti, on trial on charges of associating with the Sicilian Mafia, addressed a Vatican conference on health last month and received a standing ovation. Photographs of him shaking hands with the pope were printed widely in Italian newspapers.

Referring to Andreotti, the young man said: “You will pass into the sad history appropriate to you.”