"Senseless massacre"

Mountain village rebels against the felling of fir trees for the Pope

(Bild: Krone KREATIV/APA/AFP/Alberto PIZZOLI, APA/Filippo MONTEFORTE)

A 30-metre-high, 200-year-old Norway spruce is to decorate St. Peter's Square in Rome during the Christmas season. But the inhabitants of the mountain village near Lake Garda, where the Christmas tree is to come from, want to prevent this. A citizens' committee has now hired a lawyer to take legal action to protect the tree.

"We are against this senseless massacre of fir trees at Christmas time," explained the committee from the village of Ledro in Trentino in northern Italy. "It makes no sense to talk about the damage caused by climate change if we then uphold customs such as this one, to which a centuries-old Norway spruce is to fall victim. It would be nice to decorate our fir tree without cutting it down. Many young people have developed a different feeling for nature in recent years and are helping us with our cause," says a letter from the committee. 

In 2022, the Pope had to make do with a tree from the nursery after protests.(Bild: APA/AFP/Tiziana FABI)

The citizens of Ledro also referred to Pope Francis' encyclicals, in which he calls for respect for the environment: "We ask His Holiness to avert this deforestation and come to us in the valley to admire the beauty of this place," the residents demand. "Why not think about building an artistic tree from the wood of trees that have fallen due to climatic events?" says a petition launched on the online platform change.org.

Time and again controversy over Christmas trees
This is not the first time that the Christmas tree that adorns St. Peter's Square has been at the center of controversy. After environmentalists protested in 2022 against the planned felling of a 200-year-old fir tree in the Apennines, which was to have been given to the Pope as a Christmas tree for St. Peter's Square, Francis had to make do with a smaller and younger tree. Instead of the silver fir from a forest area under EU protection, which the municipality of Rosello in the Apennine region of Abruzzo wanted to give as a gift, the Pope received one from a tree nursery. 

In 1989, when John Paul II was Pope, there were protests by Austrian environmentalists against the felling of a 32-metre-high spruce tree in Kopfing, Upper Austria (Schärding district), which was to adorn St. Peter's Square that year. Despite protests from the Nature Conservation Association, the spruce was sent on its journey to Rome on an articulated lorry. During Joseph Ratzinger's pontificate in 2006, the WWF launched an appeal from the southern Italian region of Calabria, which donated the fir tree for St. Peter's Square that year.