The pope's scheduled state visit to Germany has sparked infighting among the country's Social Democrats, after a member of their ranks petitioned to boycott his Bundestag address.

Bundestag representative Rolf Schwanitz sent a petition Saturday to 146 parliamentarians in a bid to block Pope Benedict XVI's speech, set to be held in the lower house of German parliament, during his visit in September.

He said the speech was "irreconcilable" with the German state's religious neutrality, adding that the Bundestag was no place for proselytization.

Schwanitz called the pontiff Europe's "last absolute monarch," saying that he was complicit in the AIDS epidemic, as well as the "oppression, exploitation and stigmatization of millions of people."

The Social Democrats' parliamentary leader Thomas Oppermann rejected Schwanitz's proposed boycott, telling tabloid Bild am Sonntag that the pope would "not hold a church service, but rather talk about current political issues."

Pope Benedict is scheduled to visit his native Germany on September 22-25. It will be the pontiff's first official state visit. Since taking the Catholic Church's helm, he visited Cologne in 2005 for World Youth Day and made a private visit in 2006 to his home state of Bavaria.

Author: David Levitz (AFP, epd)

Editor: Sean Sinico