Vatican City - Pope Benedict said on Wednesday he realised his recent encyclical could seem difficult to understand at first but hoped he had answered some basic questions about the Roman Catholic faith.
The Pope made his comments in a cover letter for Italy's weekly Famiglia Cristiana magazine, which is printing the entire encyclical for its readers.
"At the beginning, in fact the text might appear to be a bit difficult and theoretical," the Pope writes. "But when you move ahead with the reading it is clear that I only wanted to answer a few very concrete questions regarding Christian life."
His long-awaited first encyclical, "Deus Caritas Est" (God is Love), was issued last week.
It ranges in themes from erotic and spiritual love in a personal relationship, to the role of the Catholic Church's vast network of charity organisations around the world.
In the letter to the magazine's readers, believed to be an unprecedented gesture by a Pope, Benedict went over some of the points of the 70-page treatise and elaborated on what he was trying to say.
In the first half of the encyclical, the Pope said there was nothing wrong with erotic love between a man and a woman but that it risked being reduced to a "commodity" of sex if it was not part of a higher spiritual love within marriage.
The second part of the encyclical is dedicated to charity and the proper role of Christian charitable groups.