Benedict Rues Reaction to His Remarks
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ROME — The pope, Benedict XVI, said he was “deeply sorry” yesterday for the reaction to comments that he made about Islam in an attempt to ease tensions after a weekend in which churches were set on fire and an Italian nun and her bodyguard were shot to death.
“I am deeply sorry for the reactions in some countries to a few passages of my address at the University of Regensburg, which were considered offensive to the sensibility of Muslims,” Benedict said in his Angelus address. He said his comments were “a quotation from a medieval text, which do not in any way express my personal thought.”
The address, broadcast live to the Arab world via the Al-Jazeera television network, were his first direct words since he used a theology lecture in Germany to quote a 14th-century Christian emperor who said the Prophet Muhammad brought only evil things to the world.
The comments triggered violent street protests, and Islamic leaders demanded a personal apology.
During the weekend, several churches in the West Bank were set on fire, and a crowd in Kashmir burned an effigy of the pope. In Somalia, an elderly Italian nun who devoted her life to helping the sick in Africa was shot dead by two gunmen at a hospital in an attack possibly linked to the pope’s offending words, the Associated Press reported.
Sister Leonella, 65, was shot in the back four times by pistol-wielding attackers as she left the Austrian-run S.O.S. hospital at lunchtime after finishing nursing school for trainee medics. Sister Leonella, whose birth name was Rosa Sgorbati, had lived and worked in Kenya and Somalia for 38 years, her family said. Her bodyguard was also slain.
No one claimed responsibility for the attack, which came just hours after a leading Somali cleric condemned the pope’s remarks last week on Islam and violence.
The pope’s latest words placated some Islamic leaders who gave a guarded welcome, while others expressed confusion over whether he had actually apologized.
In Turkey, which the pope is due to visit in November, the state minister, Mehmet Aydin, said: “You either have to say, ‘I’m sorry’ in a proper way, or not say it at all. Are you sorry for saying such a thing or because of its consequences?” The influential Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt initially greeted the pope’s words as “sufficient” before later saying that it was not “a clear apology that can satisfy Muslims.”
