Asked by reporters about the first attack on the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo — in which 12 people died — the Pope said: "One cannot provoke, one cannot insult other people's faith, one cannot make fun of faith. There is a limit. Every religion has its dignity… in freedom of expression there are limits.
"You cannot provoke. You cannot insult the faith of others. You cannot make fun of the faith of others."
While joking with members of the press, he turned to his assistant Alberto Gasparri and said: "If my good friend Dr Gasparri says a curse word against my mother, he can expect a punch," Francis said, at which the Pope mockingly threw one in Gasparri's direction.
However, his comments — which came on the day hundreds of people queued up in British newsagents to buy copies of the first post-attack edition of the magazine — were quickly seized upon as giving some justification to the shootings, in which a total of 17 people, as well as the three terrorists were killed. The Twittersphere was alive.
New Orleans criminal defence attorney C.J. Murdoch said: "If the Pope is horribly wrong on economics and free speech, why does he have an authority on matters of faith?"
Burning at the Stake?
British politician Dr Evan Harris was outraged. He tweeted that the Pope's comments — also coming as several of the Paris victims were being buried — were trite and offensive. "The Pope said ‘people's faith must not be insulted'. Or else what, your holiness? Burning at the stake? Astonishing outburst from Pope," he wrote.
TV chat show host and former editor of the Daily Mirror, Piers Morgan tweeted: "Sorry, Holy Father @Pontifex — but you're so dangerously wrong about free speech".
Sorry, Holy Father @Pontifex — but you're so dangerously wrong about free speech > http://t.co/5LXAah7wV6
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 15, 2015
Pope Francis' press office quickly issued a clarification following his comments, saying the Pope did not advocate violence and that his words had been taken out of context. The Rev. Thomas Rosica, an assistant to the Vatican, said in a statement that Francis' words were "spoken colloquially and in a friendly, intimate manner among colleagues and friends on the journey.
"The pope's expression is in no way intended to be interpreted as a justification for the violence and terror that took place in Paris last week. His words mean that there are limits to humour and satire particularly in the ways that we speak about matters of faith and belief," he said.
Magazine Founder says Editor went Too Far
Meanwhile, the founder of Charlie Hebdo, Henri Roussel, has said its editor, Stéphane Charbonnier — known as Charb, and who died in the attack — had dragged his journalists to their deaths by continually poking fun at the Prophet Mohammad.
The magazine has been publishing articles which some Muslims find offensive since 2006, when it published a cartoon of a weeping Muhammad saying: "It's hard being loved by jerks".
It caused further outrage in 2011 when it published an edition titles "Charia Hebdo", which referred to its guest editor being Mohammad, saying "100 lashes of the whip if you don't die laughing". This prompted its offices to be fire-bombed and its website to be hacked.
Writing in the French news magazine Le Nouvel Observateur, Henri Roussel said: "I am going to be unpleasant here about Charb. He was the editor. What need did he have to drag the team into such a high-stakes game?"
Roussel claimed Wolinski said: "I think we are thoughtless imbeciles who have taken a useless risk, that's all. We think we're invulnerable. For years, decades even, we stir things up and then one day all our stirring blows up in our face. We shouldn't have done it."
