Pope Tries Groveling - Won't Work

The Pope tried a personal apology today during his Sunday morning message:

CASTEL GANDOLFO, Italy (AP) - Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he was "deeply sorry" about the angry reaction to his recent remarks about Islam, which he said came from a text that didn't reflect his personal opinion.

"These (words) were in fact a quotation from a Medieval text which do not in any way express my personal thought," Benedict told pilgrims at his summer palace outside Rome.

The pope sparked the controversy when, in a speech Tuesday to university professors during a pilgrimage to his native Germany, he cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam's founder, as "evil and inhuman."

"At this time I wish also to add that 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," the pope said Sunday.

And here's all you need to know about whether the Muslim world accept his apology:

Muslim leaders in the Mideast gave mixed reactions to the pontiff's apology.

Mahmoud Ashour, the former deputy of Cairo's Al-Azhar Mosque, the Sunni Arab world's most powerful institution, told Al-Arabiya TV immediately after the pope's speech that, "It is not enough. He should apologize because he insulted the beliefs of Islam. He must apologize in a frank way and say he made a mistake."

Mohammed al-Nujeimi, a professor at the Institute of Judicial and Islamic Studies in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, also criticized the pope's statement.

"The pope does not want to apologize. He is evading apology and what he said today is a repetition of his previous statement," he told Al-Arabiya TV.

The Pope wouldn't get a pass from the Muslims if he crawled all the way to Mecca on hands and knees and kissed the mullahs right on the lips. I fully expect that there will be some type of attack against the Pope or at least his followers in the coming days. I don't think I'd get too excited about hanging around in St. Peter's square for awhile.

UPDATE: Somali gunmen kill elderly nun in a hospital:

UNIDENTIFIED gunmen shot and killed an elderly Italian nun at a hospital in the Islamist-controlled Somali capital, witnesses and medical workers said.

The attackers entered the Austrian-funded SOS Hospital in southern Mogadishu’s Huriwa District and opened fire, killing the nun before escaping in the ensuing confusion, they said.

“They came into the compound and shot the nun and then ran away,” one medical worker said.

“We don’t know who they were.”

The nun, believed to be in her 70s, was one the longest-serving foreign members of the Catholic church in Somalia, a former Italian colony, officials said.

I bet I know who they are.