(OSV News) ─ Of all the discourses he delivered in his nearly eight-year pontificate -- with the exception of his 2013 resignation -- Pope Benedict XVI's Sept. 12, 2006, address at the University of Regensburg sparked unprecedented global reaction.
During his address, the pope cited the 14th-century Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologus' views about the relationship between religion and violence, particularly in Islam: "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."
Although Pope Benedict prefaced the quote by saying the emperor spoke with "a startling brusqueness" that he and modern audiences found "unacceptable," it did little to quell the controversy, which sparked protests worldwide.
As criticism mounted, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then Vatican secretary of state, issued a statement saying that while Pope Benedict regretted that the quote "sounded offensive to the sensitivities" of Muslims, he "did not mean, nor does he mean, to make that opinion his own in any way."
"He simply used it as a means to undertake ─ in an academic context, and as is evident from a complete and attentive reading of the text ─ certain reflections on the theme of the relationship between religion and violence in general, and to conclude with a clear and radical rejection of the religious motivation for violence, from whatever side it may come," Cardinal Bertone wrote.
In an interview with OSV News Sept. 4, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, former prefect of what was then the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said the address was "a scientific presentation of these problems of the link between faith and reason."
The cardinal, who was present at the speech as bishop of Regensburg, recalled that it was "a very great speech" and that the focus of Pope Benedict's address was to highlight that faith and violence were incompatible "because Jesus suffered for us to overcome violence and there's no possibility for violence, for murders, (for) killing in the name of God."
"It must be absolutely clear that it is against the will of God that in his name people are violated or killed or anything done bad against them," Cardinal Müller told OSV News.
While all religions have a right to proclaim their faith, the German cardinal said that the "will of God is that we, with our own free will, accept the message and the belief."
However, power and violence are "absolutely against the will of God."
Regarding the controversy, Cardinal Müller said that about a thousand professors from Germany and Austria were present and applauded the speech, adding that the ensuing accusations that the pope spoke against Islam were "a misinterpretation."
"If you read the text, and you know him and all his theology," the cardinal told OSV News, "this interpretation was absolutely impossible."
Reflecting on the 20th anniversary of Pope Benedict's speech, Father Roberto Regoli, president of the Joseph Ratzinger-Benedict XVI Vatican Foundation, told OSV News that the controversy surrounding the speech was "overcome" a decade ago and that, in today's world, it has proven prophetic.
"What was the issue at stake for Benedict XVI in that masterful address at the university? The incompatibility that must exist between religion and violence -- it is a radical incompatibility. And so, that speech of Ratzinger's remains profoundly relevant today," Father Regoli said in a Sept. 11 telephone interview with OSV News.
Pope Benedict's insistence that authentic faith enters into the dialogue of cultures through reason also challenges the use of religion as a political shield, often seen today when religion is invoked to justify divisive policies.
Instead of using faith as a defensive barrier, the late pontiff highlighted the importance of embracing a "breadth of reason" in order to engage in "the dialogue of cultures."
This balance, Father Regoli told OSV News, prevents using faith for political ends.
"That is why in Ratzinger's speech, he spoke of how reason purifies religion from the risk of fundamentalism, and religion purifies reason, society, and the state from the risk of falling into totalitarianism," he said. "That is, the Catholic proposal is always one of extreme balance, which obviously requires people to be very reasonable in the exercise of their roles."
He also noted that other significant issues raised by Pope Benedict are particularly relevant in the age of artificial intelligence, an issue that his successor, Pope Leo XIV, has tackled since the start of his pontificate.
At Regensburg, Pope Benedict warned of "a dangerous state of affairs for humanity" if science becomes the only measure of truth. By stripping religion and ethics from "collective reason," he argued, modern thought reduces "man himself."
"Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology end up being simply inadequate," the late pope said.
For Father Regoli, the pope's alarm over reducing humanity to technological efficiency relates to modern debates surrounding artificial intelligence and the growing push to reshape what it means to be human.
Instead, he noted, Pope Benedict aimed to place mankind "back at the center."
"Consider the visions of transhumanism and posthumanism ─ they pose the fundamental question: Who is man?" Father Regoli told OSV News. "And in Ratzinger's proposal, we find a clear answer, the same answer Christianity has provided throughout history: man made in the image and likeness of God, responding to a plan according to God. That is, the center is not human arbitrariness, but the attempt to remain faithful to a supernatural vision of the human."
The president of the Ratzinger Foundation told OSV News that "the world has changed greatly" and has become more perilous since Pope Benedict's speech.
"There is a perception of greater conflict and tension compared to 20 years ago, even though back then we were in the period following the destruction of the twin towers in New York," Father Regoli said, referring to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Nevertheless, he added, what remains true to this day is that building a better society is possible through the balance of faith and reason.
"That great address of Pope Benedict XVI in fact proposed a high-level social coexistence: a social coexistence featuring the contribution of both reason and faith, of both religion and the state, but in a harmonious, nondestructive, and nonadversarial manner," Father Regoli said.
"When people fall into extremisms on either side -- or into fundamentalisms, to use the appropriate term -- violent conflicts are created that destroy what is human," he said.
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Junno Arocho Esteves is an international correspondent for OSV News. Follow him on X @jae_journalist. OSV News Vatican Editor Courtney Mares contributed to this report. Follow her on X @catholicourtney.
