Security has been stepped up around St. Peter's Square at the Vatican where a Christmas tree will be formally handed over Saturday by the far-right Austrian politician Joerg Haider.
Rubbish bins and cars on roads leading to the square have been removed, and security has been heightened around the Columbus Hotel where Haider and his wife will stay.
Haider and a delegation from the Austrian state of Carinthia, where he is governor, will officially present the 33-meter (108 ft) conifer which will stand in the square throughout the Christmas period.
Haider will also have an audience early Saturday with Pope John Paul II.
His visit has already provoked protests by political figures, the Jewish community, associations of World War II partisan fighters against Nazism and wartime deportees.
They have been angered by Haider's remarks sympathetic to Hitler's Waffen SS and referring to Nazi concentration camps as "punishment camps."
The Vatican has explained that it accepted the offer of the tree from Carinthia in 1997, before Haider was elected governor there.
Students plan to demonstrate in the center of Rome on Saturday and communists and anarchists will rally in gardens near St. Peter's Square, ahead of the formal tree presentation ceremony.
Late Thursday several thousand people held a torchlight procession in Rome to protest Haider's visit. It was called by unions, leftist groups and other organizations.
Marchers, who included Employment Minister Cesare Salvi, senators, deputies and local mayors, carried banners saying "Haider, Rome does not forget".
On Thursday the pope released a document condemning racism and xenophobia. Although it was seen as a rebuke to Haider, who has been widely criticized for espousing anti-immigrant policies, the Vatican insisted its timing was coincidental to his visit.
The pope's message was to mark the Day of World Peace on January 1 next year and called on people to avoid "pathological manifestations," such as "forms of nationalism, racism and xenophobia."
"Immigrants must always be treated with the respect due to the dignity of every human person," it added.
In keeping with the papal tradition of presenting a copy of the message to guests, Haider will be given the document on Saturday -- VATICAN CITY (AFP)
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