The Pope has made a fresh attempt to calm widespread Muslim anger as he expressed the hope that comments he made last week on Islam would lead to dialogue.

|PIC1|Pope Benedict XVI made the comments as he addressed the faithful outside the Vatican in St Peter's Square, Rome, on Wednesday.

In his weekly address, the Pope said: "I hope ... my deep respect for great religions, in particular for Muslims ... has emerged clearly.

"I trust that after the initial reaction, my words ... can constitute an impulse and encouragement toward positive, even self-critical dialogue."

This would be "both among religions and between modern reason and Christian faith".

He added that the anger that had resulted from his comments were the result of an "unfortunate misunderstanding" and that the use of a medieval quotation to criticise the use of violence to spread the Muslim faith did not reflect his own opinions.

The Pope's latest attempt to clarify his comments comes after a statement on Sunday in which he said he was "deeply sorry" for the angry reaction that last week's speech had prompted but expressed the hope that the furore would eventually lead to "positive and self-critical dialogue" between religions.

The Pope was also keen to reiterate his respect for the followers of all religions, "particularly Muslims", he said.

According to The Times, the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey of Clifton has defended the Pope's speech and also urged the Muslim world to confront the challenges facing the religion which he said had developed a "deep-seated Westophobia" in recent times.

In a lecture titled The Cross and the Crescent: The Clash of Faiths in an Age of Secularism, at Newbold College, Berkshire, Lord Carey said that Muslims had to address "with great urgency" the association of their religion with violence.

"We are living in dangerous and potentially cataclysmic times," he said. "There will be no significant material and economic progress [in Muslim communities] until the Muslim mind is allowed to challenge the status quo of Muslim conventions and even their most cherished shibboleths."

He described the relationship between Islamic countries and the West as "the most dangerous, most important and potentially cataclysmic issue of our day" and said that the Danish cartoons crisis last March had revealed "two world views colliding in public space with no common point of reference".

Lord Carey went on to defend the crux of the Pope's thesis, saying: "The actual essay is an extraordinarily effective and lucid thesis exploring the weakness of secularism and the way that faith and reason go hand in hand."