Pope Benedict XVI, facing the biggest crisis of his 17-month reign, offered a guarded apology on Sunday for a speech that sparked anger across the Muslim world by suggesting there was a link between Islam and violence.
Speaking to pilgrims at Castelgondolfo, his summer palace outside Rome, the 79-year-old pope said he believed in “frank and sincere dialogue” between religions and had not intended to offend Muslims.
First reactions from Islamic countries suggested Benedict’s remarks had only partly satisfied his critics, and in the Somali capital of Mogadishu an Italian nun was shot dead in an attack that alarmed Vatican officials.
Benedict gave a speech in Germany last week in which he quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor as saying that the Prophet Mohammed had brought into the world “only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached”.
Political and religious leaders from Indonesia to Iran criticised the pope, Christian churches were attacked in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and on Saturday Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Vatican.
In his weekly Angelus prayer yesterday, the pope said: “I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages in my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims.”
“These in fact were a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought. I hope this serves to appease hearts and to clarify the true meaning of my address, which in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with mutual respect.”
The remarks of the German-born pope, the leader of the Roman Catholic Church’s 1.1bn faithful, made clear that he was expressing regret about the “reactions” to his speech, rather than about the speech itself.
At the same time, his remarks represented an unusually rapid response, by Vatican standards, to an international furore that has highlighted recent tensions between Western civilisation and the Islamic world.
Like John Paul II, his predecessor who reigned from 1978 to April 2005, Benedict has talked of the importance of inter-faith dialogue but has placed more emphasis on the Church’s battle to reverse the decline of organised religion, especially in Europe.
Cardinal Ignace Moussa i Daoud, the Syrian-born prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Oriental Churches, said he hoped that yesterday’s remarks by Benedict would clear the air.
“The pope’s intentions were misunderstood, and so there were very violent reactions in all countries. The news that’s coming from the Middle East isn’t good, especially in countries where Christians and Muslims live together,” he said.
Mohammed Mahdi Akef, the leader of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, said anger over the pope’s speech was justified but that it should not last for long.
