Religion: AIDS Ruckus In the Vatican

! Normally, international conferences at the Vatican are carefully staged and well modulated. Such was the expectation last week as 1,000 theologians, church officials, health workers and top-flight scientists gathered in Rome for the first Vatican meeting on AIDS. But the script was quickly ripped up as the three-day conference was disrupted by a sign-wielding protester, dissident caucuses and angry charges and countercharges. At one point the conference's organizer, Archbishop Fiorenzo Angelini, had a tense confrontation with an AIDS victim who had sought to speak to the group.

Calm had returned by the time Pope John Paul II appeared. In the...