Late journalist Oriana Fallaci donated book collection to pontifical university

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The late Italian writer and journalist Oriana Fallaci bequeathed much of her books and notes to a pontifical university in Rome because of her admiration for Pope Benedict XVI, the university's rector told the pontiff at a ceremony Saturday.

Fallaci, who died last month, had described the pontiff as a kind of ally in her campaign to rally a Christian-tradition Europe against what she saw as a Muslim crusade against the West.

Fallaci, a self-described atheist who took the Catholic Church to task for being what she considered too weak before the Muslim world, had praised Benedict for urging Europeans to value their Christian roots. As she battled cancer, she had a private audience with Benedict, who was elected only a few months earlier, at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo in 2005. International Herald Tribune