VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict “sincerely regrets” offending Muslims with his reference to an obscure medieval text that characterizes some of the teachings of Islam’s founder as “evil and inhuman,” the Vatican said Saturday.
But the statement stopped short of the full, personal apology being demanded by Islamic leaders around the globe, and anger among Muslims remained intense. Palestinians attacked five churches in the West Bank and Gaza over the pontiff’s remarks Tuesday in a speech to university professors in his native Germany.
Benedict is scheduled to visit Turkey in November as his first trip as Pope to a Muslim country.
In a broader talk rejecting any religious motivation for violence, Benedict cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman,” particularly “his command to spread by the sword the faith.”
The pontiff didn’t specifically endorse that description, but by repeating the words and not questioning them he set off a firestorm of protests across the Muslim world.
The new Vatican secretary of state, Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, said the Pope’s position on Islam is unmistakably in line with Vatican teaching that says the church “esteems” Muslims.
Benedict “thus sincerely regrets that certain passages of his address could have sounded offensive to the sensitivities of the Muslim faithful and should have been interpreted in a manner that in no way corresponds to his intentions,” Bertone said in a statement.
Bertone said the pontiff sought in his university speech to condemn all religious motivation for violence, “from whatever side it may come.”
Black-veiled Muslim women activists of Dukhtaran-e-Millat, or Daughters of the Community, take out a procession against the Pope in Srinagar, India on Saturday.
Bertone’s statement, released Saturday by the Vatican press office, failed to satisfy critics.
Mohammed Bishr, a senior Muslim Brotherhood member in Egypt, said the statement “was not an apology” but a “pretext that the Pope was quoting somebody else as saying so and so.”
“We need the Pope to admit the big mistake he has committed and then agree on apologizing, because we will not accept others to apologize on his behalf,” Bishr said.
There was no indication whether the Pope would do so. His first public appearance since his return from Germany was set for Sunday, when Benedict planned to greet the faithful at Castel Gandolfo, the papal summer residence in the Alban Hills near Rome.
Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Vatican on Saturday to protest the Benedict’s “offensive” remarks, and Afghanistan’s parliament and Foreign Ministry demanded the Pope apologize.
Turkey cast some doubt on whether Benedict could proceed with a planned visit in November in what would be the pontiff’s first trip to a Muslim country.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan insisted the Pope apologize to the Muslim world, saying he had spoken “not like a man of religion but like a usual politician.”
Asked if Muslim anger would affect the Pope’s trip to Istanbul, where he hopes to meet with Orthodox leaders headquartered there, Erdogan replied: “I wouldn’t know.”
Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the world’s 200 million Orthodox Christians, issued a statement saying he was “deeply” saddened by the tensions sparked by the Pope’s comments.
“We have to show the determination and care not to hurt one another and avoid situations where we may hurt each others’ beliefs,” the Istanbul-based Patriarchate said.
The grand sheik of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, the Sunni Arab world’s most powerful institution, condemned the Pope’s remarks as “reflecting ignorance.”
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, whose Southeast Asian country has a large Muslim population, demanded that Benedict retract his remarks and not “take lightly the spread of outrage that has been created.”
In a first reaction from a top Christian leader, the head of Egypt’s Coptic Orthodox Church criticized the Pope. “Any remarks which offend Islam and Muslims are against the teachings of Christ,” Coptic Pope Shenouda was quoted as telling the pro-government newspaper Al-Ahram.
The Shiite Muslim militant group Hezbollah and Lebanon’s top Sunni Muslim religious authority also denounced the Pope’s comments.
British Muslims sought to calm the situation there, praising the Vatican statement on behalf of the Pope.
“We welcome his apology and we hope now we can work together and build bridges. At the same time we would condemn all forms of violent demonstration,” Muhammad Umar, chairman of Britain’s Ramadhan Foundation, a youth organization, told Sky News.
But Muhammad Abdul Bari, general secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain, said the pontiff needed to repudiate the emperor’s views he quoted to restore relations between Muslims and the Roman Catholic Church.
In India, Telesphore Cardinal Toppo, who is president of the Indian Catholic Bishops Conference, said the Christian community in that country must face Muslim protests over the Pope’s speech “with Christian courage and prayer because truth needs no other defence,” the Vatican-affiliated news agency, AsiaNews, reported.
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