Pope Deploys Damage-Control Envoys

The Vatican deployed diplomats to capitals of Muslim states Monday in an effort to defuse anger over Pope Benedict XVI’s comments on Islam, as shadowy threats against the pontiff and Christianity multiplied.

Despite an apology from the pope Sunday, protests continued in the Muslim world.

One Internet posting from a group identifying itself as Islamists told the pope: “You and the West are doomed.”

In some places, conciliatory Muslim voices were emerging. But many said they remained dissatisfied with Benedict’s statement because he said he was “deeply sorry” for the outrage his speech last week provoked but did not apologize for making the remarks.

Since the furor began, Benedict has not acknowledged making a mistake.

In the speech before a gathering of academics at Germany’s University of Regensburg, where Benedict was a theology professor in the 1970s, the pope quoted a 14th century Byzantine emperor who regarded some of the prophet Muhammad’s teachings as “evil and inhuman.”

Websites that have been tied to Muslim extremist groups such as Al Qaeda in Iraq on Monday posted a batch of threats against the pope and Rome, center of the Roman Catholic Church.

“We will conquer Rome like we conquered Constantinople,” one message said, referring to the capital of eastern Christendom that fell to Muslim Ottomans in the 15th century. Today the city in Turkey is called Istanbul.

It was difficult to determine how seriously to take the threats. But Italian security forces have called for extra vigilance, with police surveillance reportedly stepped up at mosques, Arab-owned restaurants and call centers frequently used by Muslim immigrants.

Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, charged that the pope’s speech was part of a “crusade against Islam” launched by President Bush.

Enraged protesters Monday marched in the Indian- and Pakistani-controlled sectors of Kashmir and in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country.

In Basra, Iraq, they burned an effigy of the pope and flags of the United States, Germany and Israel.

“We got out today to express our anger,” said Basra taxi driver Abdul-Ameer Abdul-Wahid, 41. “The pope should have calmed down the situation instead of complicating things by talking about Islam.”

Most of the demonstrations, while passionate, have remained small.

Guards have been posted at Christian churches in Egypt and the West Bank and Gaza Strip, where several have been firebombed in recent days.

An Italian nun was shot and killed Sunday in Somalia after a radical cleric there condemned the pope’s speech.

An Italian diplomat and his wife were killed Monday in Morocco -- a country that recalled its ambassador to the Holy See in protest -- but Italian officials said the case appeared to be a robbery.

“It is tragic that the reactions of the offended Islamists have translated into exactly the kind of violence that [the pope] was attempting to exorcise,” commentator Gian Enrico Rusconi, a political scientist at the University of Turin, said in Italy’s La Stampa newspaper.

The pontiff made no public comments Monday and is expected to address pilgrims during his weekly audience at St. Peter’s Square on Wednesday.

Cardinal Camillo Ruini, the influential auxiliary bishop of Rome and president of the Italian bishops conference, said Monday that the pope’s comments had been distorted and manipulated, shouldering him with “responsibilities that he absolutely does not have and errors that he has not committed.”

The Vatican’s newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, published the pope’s expression of regret on its front page Monday in Italian, French, English and -- highlighted in the center -- Arabic.

Its banner headline quotes the last line of Benedict’s apology, saying that his Regensburg address was “an invitation to frank and sincere dialogue, with great mutual respect.”

The pope’s secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who took office Friday, said the Holy See’s nuncios -- the ambassadors who represent the Vatican city-state abroad -- will meet with government and religious leaders in Muslim countries to attempt to clarify the speech and its full context.

Turkish and Vatican officials confirmed that their plan for Benedict’s trip to that Muslim country, which is scheduled for late November, remained on track.

Turkish commentator Selcuk Gultasli, writing in the pro-Islam newspaper Zaman, said the words of regret from the Vatican were encouraging, and that Muslims who compared the pope to Hitler or who attacked churches and shot at nuns were an embarrassment.

Still, he said, the chasm between the Muslim world and the West was larger today than it was yesterday.

The head of a Turkish lawyers association filed a petition with the Justice Ministry requesting that Benedict be arrested upon entering Turkey on charges of inciting religious hatred.

A prosecutor will have to decide whether to act on the petition.

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wilkinson@latimes.com

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A special correspondent in Basra contributed to this report.