Trees Planted by One Pope To Be Uprooted for Another

VIENNA, Austria — They were planted to honor one pope. Now, they're being purged for another. Four stately lime trees ceremoniously planted near a popular Roman Catholic shrine in 1983 for a visit to Austria by the late Pope John Paul II are being uprooted to make way for a large grandstand for next month's pilgrimage by Pope Benedict XVI.

Environmentalists have criticized the action, but church and municipal officials are playing down the trees' significance.

"This shows the hypocrisy of the church," a regional spokesman for the environmentalist Green Party in the southern province of Styria, Lambert Schönleitner, said.

Mr. Schönleitner 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.

Organizers say the trees must go to make room for a 52 1/2-foot-high steel grandstand to accommodate some of the thousands of pilgrims who will flock to the shrine town of Mariazell, 60 miles southwest of Vienna.

During his September 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.