Pope Distances Himself From Islam Comments

VATICAN CITY — The convert from Islam who denounced what he called "inherent" violence in Islam a day after Pope Benedict XVI baptized him was not expressing the pope's views, a Vatican spokesman said yesterday.

Magdi Allam "has the right to express his own ideas, which remain his personal ideas, without obviously becoming in any way the official expression of the positions of the pope or the Holy See," the chief Vatican spokesman, Reverend Federico Lombardi, said.