Vatican City - A top Vatican official said Saturday that Pope Benedict XVI “deeply regretted” that a speech he made this week “sounded offensive to the sensibility of Muslim believers.”
The statement, by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the new Vatican secretary of state, was made as denunciations from Muslim leaders over the speech continued for a third day around the world.
And in the West Bank town of Nablus on Saturday, a day after street protests and grenades were thrown at a church in the Gaza Strip, two churches were lightly damaged in fire bombings. A group calling itself the “Lions of Monotheism” said the attacks were in reaction to the pope’s remarks.
The Vatican statement stopped short of the direct personal apology from Benedict that many Muslims have been demanding. Still, the statement tried to tamp down rising anger among Muslims about the speech, in which Benedict quoted a 14th-century Byzantine emperor as calling Islam “evil and inhuman.”
Cardinal Bertone, named the second-in-command at the Vatican on Friday, said that the pope’s comments had been interpreted in a way that “absolutely did not correspond to his intentions.” He said that Benedict, whose stance on Islam has generally been more skeptical than that of his predecessor, John Paul II, respected Islam and believed strongly in dialogue among faiths.
The quotations, Cardinal Bertone said, were part of a scholarly address aimed at refuting a “religious motivation for violence, no matter where it comes from.”
On Tuesday, at Regensburg University in Germany, Benedict delivered a long, scholarly address on reason and faith in the West. But he began his speech by recounting a conversation on the truths of Christianity and Islam that took place between a 14th-century Byzantine Christian emperor, Manuel II Paleologus, and a Persian scholar.
“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the pope said.
“He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached,’ ” the pope said.
While making clear that he was quoting someone else, Benedict did not say whether he agreed or not. He also briefly discussed the Islamic concept of jihad, which he defined as “holy war,” and said that violence in the name of religion is contrary to God’s nature and to reason.
He also suggested reason as the basis for “that genuine dialogue of cultures and religions so urgently needed today.”
Nonetheless, Muslims around the world called the speech provocative, especially coming from the leader of the world’s billion Roman Catholics.
In Jordan, the state-owned daily newspaper Al Rai said called the pope’s statements “shocking.” It said the pope should apologize “so as to ease the fears of Muslims who sense they are becoming the target of an orchestrated campaign.”
Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki of Iraq called on Iraqis to refrain from violent protest over the remarks, urging people not to “carry out actions that will harm our Christian brothers here,” according to his spokesman, Ali Dabbagh.
Mr. Dabbagh said he had heard only one unofficial and unconfirmed report of any violence in Iraq related to anger over the pope’s comments. That episode involved a church in Basra, but he said he had no details.
“The pope misinterpreted Islam,” he said. “The most important thing is that such incidents should not be converted into violence in Iraq.”
Morocco recalled its ambassador to the Vatican over the remarks, according to the official MAP news agency.
And the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, threatened to sever diplomatic ties unless Benedict apologized.
In Somalia, a radical cleric was reported to have urged Muslims to “hunt down” the pope for remarks that he called “barbaric.”
“Whoever offends our Prophet Muhammad should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim,” the cleric, Sheik Abubakar Hassan Malin, told worshipers in Mogadishu on Friday, Agence France-Presse reported.
But in Turkey, amid questions about the pope’s planned visit in November, the main English-language newspaper, The Daily News, urged an end to the criticism.
While denouncing his comments, the paper said, “We just disagree with this vendettalike approach of continuing to abuse the pope after his spokesman made a statement saying that he respected Islam and did not intend to offend Muslims.”
The newspaper was printed before Cardinal Bertone spoke Saturday and was referring to a Vatican statement released on Thursday.
Security around the pope’s residence at Castel Gandolfo, near Rome, would be strengthened for the pope’s Sunday blessing, Agence France-Presse quoted the Italian ANSA news agency as saying. “Meticulous” security checks over an extended area were planned.