From Vatican Reporter:

At least one writer for Catholic press out of the Vatican is now saying that Pope Benedict XVI has no intention of backing down from his call for dialogue. This after another Vatican insider reportedly said that the Pope's reference to a dialogue with a Persian invader was a clear and direct reference to Iranian leader Mahmood Ahmadinejad, the intention being to pre-empt any "invitation to conversion to Islam" to the Pope from Iran.

From EWTN News:

"(Sandro) Magister points out that it is because the Pope knew just what he was doing and is not afraid to do it, that he will not, “fall silent or backpedal.” The dialogue with Islam is a real concern of the Holy Father’s, as so many at the Vatican have noted in recent weeks.

And, as for the words of Emperor Manuel II Paleologos (who is quickly becoming the best-know Byzantine emperor of all time) Magister holds that they were deliberate.

The time of the emperor, like our own times, were filled with war and holy war. Yet in the midst of such conflict Manuel saw the need to bring his Persian counterpart, “to the terrain of truth, reason, law, and violence, to what marks the real difference between the Christian faith and Islam, to the key questions upon which war or peace between the two civilizations depends,” the Vatican writer explains.

Pope Benedict, too, is asking Islam, “to place a limit of its own on ‘jihad.’ He proposes to the Muslims that they separate violence from faith, as prescribed by the Qur’an itself, and that they again connect faith with reason, because ‘acting against reason is in contradiction with the nature of God.’”

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Personally, I don't believe for a minute that Pope Benedict XVI "stumbled" into this controversy or is just not as "media savvy" as his predecessor. Josef Cardinal Ratzinger was always willing to take on the enemies of his faith. He did say that he would have to put certain personal goals aside while Pope to be the true voice of the head of the Church, but he never stated that he would back down from challenging those who challenge his own Church.

He's not the first Pope in history to have had a fan club from his days as just a Cardinal for nothing. Plenty of Catholics "love their German Shepherd", and with good reason as the world can now see.

Cross-posted at What Would Charles Martel Do?