A senior Vatican official is also due to meet the imam from the Rome’s mosque and the city's chief rabbi.
As the Holy See's move to appease Muslim anger got underway, the Pope consulted his top diplomatic adviser, Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, at his summer palace outside Rome.
The 79-year-old Pontiff also held talks with bishops from predominantly Muslim Chad, his first meeting with clergy from a largely Muslim country since a row erupted last week over his remarks linking Islam with violence.
The Vatican said the long-scheduled meeting with the six African bishops was part of their customary five-yearly visit to Rome.
Papal nuncios
Cardinal Bertone earlier told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that envoys from the Holy See had been asked to explain the full meaning of Pope Benedict's speech to political and religious authorities in Muslim countries.
He said Vatican ambassadors, or papal nuncios, would highlight passages of the lengthy speech which would help to clarify its true meaning but which had been ignored in the furore.
In another move aimed at calming tensions, senior Vatican Cardinal Paul Poupard will meet the Imam of Rome's mosque, Sami Salem, on Tuesday along with the city's mayor, Walter Veltroni.
The Imam on Monday told the ANSA news agency: "With the Pope's words, we have stepped back by several years."
But he added that he was endeavouring to maintain calm in the Muslim community and to "work for dialogue, despite the difficulties".
Cardinal Poupard, head of the Vatican council for Inter-faith dialogue, called last week on "Muslim friends of good will" to read the Pope's speech in its entirety before passing judgement.
On Monday evening the Vatican's newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, encouraged them also to pay careful attention to the Pope's speech on Sunday in which he said he was "deeply sorry" for the offence his words had caused: it published the full text of Sunday's statement in Arabic.
But Vatican appeasement risked being drowned out by protests which reverberated around the Muslim world, with al-Qaeda in Iraq declaring a holy war in reaction to the remarks as protestors burned an effigy of the Pope.
Italy's bishops jumped to Benedict's defence as they opened their autumn meeting. Their leader Cardinal Camillo Ruini said it was "surprising and painful" that his speech in Germany was "misunderstood to the point of being interpreted as an offence against Islam".
Cardinal Ruini said the Pope's speech had been twisted into a pretext for "intimidatory acts and despicable threats", to the extent of being a possible motive for the murder of an Italian nun, Sister Leonella Sgorbati, in Somalia on Sunday.
Comments 'heavily manipulated'
The scale and intensity of the Muslim reaction had cast doubts on the Pope's next scheduled foreign trip in November to Muslim-majority Turkey.
Cardinal Bertone, who took office as the Vatican's number two official only last week, said the first meeting of the Turkish bishops' conference to organise the visit would take place on Tuesday.
"Up to now, there has been no reason for it not to go ahead," he said of the visit.
Cardinal Bertone said the Pope's words in Germany had been "heavily manipulated" and their true meaning distorted.
The offending speech explored the historical and philosophical differences between Islam and Christianity, and the relationship between violence and faith.
But the touchpaper for the storm of criticism came in the Pope's reference to a 14th century assessment of the Prophet Mohammed in which a Byzantine Christian emperor described the influence of Islam's founder as "evil and inhuman".
Citing one example of what the papal envoys would be highlighting in their talks with Muslim officials, Cardinal Bertone said the Pope's description of the "startling brusqueness" of the emperor's comment went unreported in the furore.