Pope meets anti-Islam author, reports say

ROME - Pope Benedict has had a meeting with Oriana Fallaci, the Italian author of best-selling books that criticise Islam, it was reported on Tuesday.

Italian news agency Ansa quoted Vatican sources as saying the private meeting took place on Saturday at the Pope's summer residence in Castelgandolfo, near Rome.

The Vatican was not immediately available to comment, but one official, who declined to give his name, said such a meeting had been under discussion for a long time.

Fallaci lives in New York and has regularly provoked the wrath of Muslims with her outspoken criticism of Islam and Arab states after the September 11, 2001, attacks on US cities.

An Italian judge in May ordered her to stand trial for defaming Islam in her 2004 book, La Forza della Ragione (The Force of Reason).

In the book, Fallaci wrote that terrorists had killed 6000 people over the past 20 years in the name of the Koran and said the Islamic faith "sows hatred in the place of love and slavery in the place of freedom".

News of her meeting with the Pope is likely to anger some Muslims, but Italian politicians said Benedict had been right to accept Fallaci's request for a private audience.

"The Holy Father has acted as the Vicar of Christ and acted like Christ himself, who never refused to talk to anyone," said former Italian president Francesco Cossiga.

Fallaci, who is in her 70s and undergoing chemotherapy for cancer, publicly welcomed the election of Pope Benedict in April, praising his conservative Catholic credentials and his call for the defence of traditionalist teachings.

- REUTERS