PARIS — Pope Benedict XVI denounced fundamentalist fanaticism as he addressed cultural figures, including Muslim leaders, at the start of a French pilgrimage yesterday that inflamed debate in Paris over the influence religion should have on politics.

In separate remarks, including in a speech to conservative French President Nicolas Sarkozy, Benedict encouraged a role for religion in shaping public policy, a stand that quickly enraged some of France's staunch advocates of government secularism.

His meeting later with representatives from the world of culture coincided with the second anniversary of his speech in Regensburg, Germany, that incensed many in the Muslim world with its comments on Islam's relation to violence.

Several Muslim leaders were among the 600 guests invited to listen to the pope in the College des Bernadins, a former monastery that was a temple of learning for medieval Christian monks.

The four-day trip is Benedict's first to France since he became pope in 2005.

Papal spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said the Muslims were invited to the speech as one of several groups of religious leaders the pope met with yesterday, and that the anniversary of the Sept. 12, 2006, speech was a coincidence.

Later in the evening, Protestant representatives were to attend a prayer service led by the pope in Notre Dame cathedral. Today, the pope will visit the Lourdes shrine in southern France.

Benedict met earlier in the day with French Jewish leaders. He told them the church condemns all forms of anti-Semitism and praised Jewish contribution to French politics, culture and arts.

The pontiff extended best wishes to the Muslim leaders for the holy season of Ramadan, but made no reference to his Regensburg speech. Benedict previously has said he regretted any offense that speech might have caused in the Muslim world.

At the end of the event, Benedict grasped the hands of the Muslim leaders as they approached him one by one and warmly greeted each one.

His speech explored dilemmas in society today, specifically the pulls between what he called "the poles of subjective arbitrariness and fundamentalist fanaticism."

"It would be a disaster if today's European culture could only conceive freedom as absence of obligation, which would inevitably play into the hands of fanaticism and arbitrariness," Benedict said.

The pope also argued that any banishing of questions dealing with God to the realm of the unscientific would be a "disaster for humanity."

"What gave Europe's culture its foundation — the search for God and the readiness to listen to him — remains today the basis of any genuine culture," the pope said.

Muslim leaders said they were impressed by the pope's high-flying intellectual discourse but had hoped to hear concrete answers to the divide between Muslim and Christian communities.

"We would have liked also that he give a few signs on the Islamic-Christian dialogue, on the church's mission, which is to reach out to others, and on our shared values," said the rector of the Paris Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur.

Earlier in the day, the pope urged faithful, particularly Christians, to help infuse ethics into society.

Traditionally Roman Catholic France is wrestling with its changing religious landscape, which has a growing Muslim population.

Benedict told reporters on the plane to Paris that "religion and politics must be open to each other."

He described Christian values as "fundamental for the survival of our nations and our societies."

Benedict seemed to have found an ally in Sarkozy, who, in his welcoming speech at the presidential Elysee Palace, said "it would be folly to deprive ourselves" of religions' contributions, a "blow against culture and thought."

Reverence for secularism among some French is such that one prominent politician, centrist and practicing Catholic Francois Bayrou, questioned Sarkozy's decision to invite the pope to the Elysee Palace, saying that government and religion don't mix.

A Socialist senator, Jean-Luc Melenchon, painted the pope's visit as a deliberate effort to weaken France's secular foundations.