I’ve excerpted the pertinent parts of Pope Benedict XVI’s speech, and as you can read below these are clearly not the opinions of the Pope, but rather a scholarly springboard to the main topic of his speech, the ties between Greek Logos (word and reason) and modern Christian faith. This is tie easily seen by the adoption of Stoic philosophy and other Greek schools to Christianity. (if you read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius you will see many passages that many priests would agree with, or even say today if they replaced the word “gods” with God)
It’s timely that the Pope brought this up as there were forced conversions not only in the fourteenth century, but just last month in Gaza.