Environmental campaigners in Italy’s northern Trentino province have started a campaign to stop the felling of a 200-year-old fir tree intended to form the centrepiece of the Vatican’s Christmas decorations.
The so-called “Green Giant” is 29 metres tall and is due to be chopped down next week in a forest in the Ledro valley before being transported to the Vatican and positioned in St Peter’s Square, where it will be unveiled on 9 December.
The Vatican’s Christmas tree tradition began in 1982 and ever since then a fir is donated each year, either from a region in Italy or another European country. The gift is often a source of pride.
But several environmental associations in Trentino are determined to foil this year’s plan. They have written an open letter to Pope Francis asking him to stop what they described as “a useless sacrifice”. More than 40,000 people have signed a petition and residents in Ledro, a town with a population of about 600, are reportedly planning a road-block protest to prevent the tree’s passage to Rome.
The letter reminded the pontiff, who often lambasts climate crisis deniers, that some of his encyclicals have focused on safeguarding the environment.
“It is inconsistent to talk about fighting climate change and then perpetuate traditions like this, which require the elimination of such an ancient and symbolic tree,” the associations wrote.
The petition’s appeal urged people to sign against “the purely consumerist practice” of using living trees “for mere advertising purposes and a few ridiculous selfies”.
However, Renato Girardi, the mayor of Ledro, hit back, telling the Italian press that he had not expected “such malice”.
“They are ruining the Christmas festivities just for a plant,” he added. “We only want to donate a fir tree, and I would like to underline that if it wasn’t donated it would end up in a sawmill.”
He added that the valley’s forests were managed in compliance with PEFC, the European Commission forestry certification system.
“The fir tree that will be removed is part of one of the lots that must be felled for the correct cultivation of the forest,” he said.
Girardi denied claims by the campaigners that 39 more trees would be torn down and dispatched to the Vatican to adorn the internal areas of the tiny city state in an operation alleged to cost €60,000 (£50,000).
“There is no shortage of inaccuracies [in their appeal],” Girardi told the online newspaper il Dolomiti. “It is true that 40 trees will go towards the Vatican but only one will be cut down in the woods of the Ledro while the other 39 will be purchased from specialised nurseries, because the Holy See had expressed, from the beginning, its preference for Nordmann fir trees suitable for interiors because they do not lose their needles. These trees have another particular characteristic: they do not grow in Ledro.”
The cost of chopping down and transporting the Green Giant was, in fact, €6,000, he said.
A spokesperson for the Vatican did not immediately respond to a request for comment.