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New York Times - September 17, 2006
Pope Apologizes for Uproar Over His Remarks
By Ian Fisher
ROME, Sept. 17 — Pope Benedict XVI sought Sunday to extinguish days of anger and protest among Muslims by issuing an extraordinary personal apology for having caused offense with a speech last week that cited a reference to Islam as “evil and inhuman.”
“I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address,” the pope told pilgrims at the summer papal palace of Castel Gandolfo, “which were considered offensive.’’
“These were in fact quotations from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought,” the pope, 79, said in Italian, according to the official English translation.
“The true meaning of my address,” he said, “in its totality was and is an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.”
His apology came amid much worry in the church about violence and any erosion of the status of the papacy as a neutral figure for peace among faiths. In Somalia on Sunday, the Italian Foreign Ministry reported, an Italian nun was shot to death. A day earlier, five churches were firebombed in the West Bank and one in Iraq.
Although Benedict’s predecessor, John Paul II, issued several apologies for the historical failings of the Roman Catholic Church, experts said it appeared to be the first time in recent memory that a pope had made such a direct, personal apology for his own.
“This is really, really abnormal,” said Alberto Melloni, professor of history at the University of Modena, who has written several books on the Vatican. “It’s never happened as far as I know.”…
It was not immediately clear whether this apology would tamp down the anger, which recalled the furor earlier this year after European newspapers published cartoons unflattering to the Prophet Mohammad.
In Egypt, a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood, which had been critical of the pope, initially said Sunday that the pope’s remarks represented a “good step toward an apology.” Later statements from the group, however, seemed to cast doubt on whether it accepted the apology fully.
In Gaza, the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, denounced attacks on some half-dozen churches there and in the West Bank. In Bethlehem, sacred to Christians as the birthplace of Jesus and home to many Arab Christians, police presence was higher than usual.
“The Christian brothers are a part of the Palestinian people, and I heard the highest Christian authority in Palestine denouncing the statements against Islam and against Muslims,” Mr. Haniya told reporters.
Meantime on Sunday, protest continued around the Muslim world.
In Iran, several hundred theological students were given the day off to protest in Qum, the nation’s center for religious study, as the Vatican envoy in Tehran was summoned for an official complaint about the remarks. Several radical Iraqi groups posted threats on the Internet against the Vatican and Christians in general.
In Mogadishu, the capital of the former Italian colony of Somalia, an Italian nun died after being shot several times in an ambush in a hospital in which a Somali bodyguard was also killed. It was unclear if the attack was retribution for the pope’s remarks, although the Vatican issued a response. The Rev. Federico Lombardi, the chief Vatican spokesman, was quoted by the ANSA news agency as calling the killing “horrible.” “We hope it remains an isolated incident,” he said.
While anger remained high in Turkey, the nation’s foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, said on Sunday that he expected Benedict’s planned trip there in November would go ahead. But he called the pope’s remarks “really regrettable.”
The Vatican’s new secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, also said Sunday that he expected the pope’s visit to Turkey to proceed.
“For the time being, there is no reason why it should not,” he told the ANSA news agency…..
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/17/world/europe/17cnd-pope.html?hp&ex=1158552000&en=0d4754e0f8567959&ei=5094&partner=homepage
Washington Post - September 18, 2006
Pope 'sorry' about reaction to Islam remark
By Alan Cooperman
Pope Benedict XVI said yesterday that he is "deeply sorry" about the reaction in some countries to a recent speech in which he quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as saying that the prophet Muhammad brought "only evil and inhuman" things to the world.
The pope said that the quotation from Manuel II Palaeologus did not reflect his personal views, and that his speech last Tuesday at Germany's University of Regensburg was intended to invite inter-religious dialogue "with great mutual respect."
Benedict's brief statement was the third attempt by Vatican officials in as many days to cool the reaction to his speech, which escalated from diplomatic protests to violence over the weekend. . .
But John L. Esposito, director of the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University, said that the pope "has apologized," and that an apology was appropriate because the Regensburg speech was "inaccurate and offensive."
Esposito said the nonviolent condemnations of the pope's speech by "mainstream Muslim leaders and governments" were "wholly predictable and legitimate," because Benedict began his speech on the relationship between faith and reason with an inflammatory quote from a medieval source and did not, at the time, make clear whether he agreed with it.
"It's like saying, 'I want to talk about the problem of hating other people,' and then putting out a flagrantly anti-Semitic comment as a starting point and not deconstructing it," he said.
Esposito also said the speech contained an important factual error.
Benedict noted in the Regensburg address that one verse, or sura, of the Koran says, "There is no compulsion in religion," meaning that conversions should not take place by force. "According to the experts, this is one of the suras of the early period, when Muhammad was still powerless and under threat," the pope said.
Esposito said that, in fact, the "no compulsion in religion" is a later verse, from Muhammad's time in Medina -- when he had effectively established a state, not from the Mecca period in which he was under threat. "The pope was suggesting that the ban on forcible conversions was overtaken by later verses advocated the spread of Islam by the sword, but that is false," the professor said.
A leading U.S. Muslim group also called Benedict's speech inaccurate but appealed for calm.
"The proper response to the pope's inaccurate and divisive remarks is for Muslims and Catholics worldwide to increase dialogue and outreach efforts aimed at building better relations between Christianity and Islam," the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations said….
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/17/AR2006091700178.html
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