Pope Meets With Muslims

The pope offered his olive branch during an unprecedented meeting with Islamic religious leaders and ambassadors from 22 predominantly Muslim countries.

"I should like to reiterate all the esteem and the profound respect that I have for Muslim believers," the pontiff told the ambassadors and charge d'affaires he invited to his summer residence south of Rome.

His audience included envoys from Iran, Turkey and Morocco and was the latest step in a diplomatic offensive by the Vatican aimed at mollifying Muslim anger over recent comments by the pope.

"In a world marked by relativism and too often excluding the transcendence and universality of reason, we are in great need of an authentic dialogue between religions and between cultures, capable of assisting us, in a spirit of fruitful co-operation, to overcome all the tensions together," the pope said.

In a speech on Sept. 12 while visiting his native Germany, Benedict quoted from a medieval text by Christian emperor Manuel II that criticized some teachings of the Prophet Mohammed as "evil and inhuman."

"I am profoundly convinced that in the current world situation it is imperative that Christians and Muslims engage with one another in order to address the numerous challenges that present themselves to humanity," the pope said.

"Christians and Muslims must learn to work together ... in order to guard against all forms of intolerance and to oppose all manifestations of violence," he added.

Trying to "build bridges"

The meeting at Castel Gandolfo, which had been heavily promoted by the Vatican as a major step in reaffirming the pope's commitment to inter-religious harmony, lasted barely 30 minutes.

After his address, the pope shook hands and exchanged a few words with the assembled envoys, some of whom expressed satisfaction with the meeting.

"I think it is time to put what happened behind us and build bridges among all the civilizations," said Iraqi ambassador Albert Yelda, who nevertheless defended the anger that had surfaced over the pope's comments earlier this month.

"Many Muslims around the world were offended," Yelda said. "They expressed their feelings and they were right to do so. Everybody has a right to express his feelings."

A furor erupted in the Muslim world following the pope's speech at the University of Regensburg in Germany, in which he quoted the medieval emperor who equated Islam with violence.

Since then, thousands of Muslims in Iran, Afghanistan and the Gaza Strip have protested against the pope's remarks.

While insisting that the content of his lecture had been misinterpreted, the pope sought to calm the situation last week, repeatedly saying he was "deeply sorry" for any offence Muslims might have taken from his comments.

The Italian paper La Repubblica reported that in the over 2,000-year-old history of the Catholic Church, a pope has never had to publicly express regret over his statements several times.