The Vatican on Thursday rejected an audiotaped accusation from Osama bin Laden that Pope Benedict XVI was leading a “new crusade” against Muslims, but Italian security officials were concerned about the threats included in bin Laden’s new message.
“These accusations are absolutely unfounded,” Rev. Federico Lombardi, the pope’s chief spokesman, said by phone. “There is nothing new in this, and it doesn’t have any particular significance for us.”
The audio message attributed to bin Laden was released Wednesday night and was addressed to “the intelligent ones in the European Union.” It was posted on a militant Web site on Wednesday, and an English transcription was distributed Thursday by the SITE Intelligence Group in Bethesda, Md., which tracks Al Qaeda postings on the Internet.
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The message listed broad grievances but specifically mentioned the pope and coincided with the busiest week of the year at the Vatican, the week leading up to Easter. The pope will appear at several public events, including the annual Good Friday procession of the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum.
In the five-minute audio, the speaker said there would be a “severe” reaction against the publication in Europe of cartoons that many Muslims consider offensive to the Prophet Muhammad. He said the cartoons — one reprinted in February in Denmark, more than two years after they were first published — “came in the framework of a new crusade in which the pope of the Vatican has played a large, lengthy role.”
Without naming any specific action or target, the speaker said, “The response will be what you see and not what you hear, and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God.”
Lombardi dismissed the accusations, noting that the pope had condemned the cartoons several times and stressed that “religion must be respected.”
Al Qaeda and its supporters have issued several threats against the pope since he quoted a medieval Byzantine emperor in a speech in Germany two years ago referring to Islam as “evil and inhuman.” The pope apologized for the anger caused by the speech.
Asked about heightened security concerns, Lombardi said the new message “does not in any way affect the conduct of the pope.” He said the Vatican has no plans for any more security than what was already in place for the public events leading up to Easter.
An Italian security official was quoted Thursday by the ANSA news agency as saying that officials were taking the threats “seriously.”