Mumbai: A Bollywood actor on Sunday apologized for hurting Catholic sentiments after Cardinal Oswald Gracias urged him to refrain from making flippant remarks.

“It is expected that a reputed actor like Hrithik Roshan would be careful in his remarks and be sensitive to the feelings of the community,” Cardinal Gracias said in a statement on April 2.

A day later, Roshan tweeted: “Seems my tweet about His Holiness has led 2misunderstanding. My apologies 4 hurt caused 2religious or other sentiments. Was unintentional.”

The cardinal’s statement came after an earlier tweet from Roshan on the Pope became controversial. A Catholic group in Mumbai alleged that the remark suggested the Pope was gay.

Roshan’s tweet in January came as a public reaction to an interview by his alleged former girlfriend and Bollywood actress, Kangana Ranaut, when she said that a “silly ex” was giving her trouble and causing her to lose roles.

Roshan then jokingly tweeted, “Ther r more chances of me having had an affair with d Pope dan any of d (Im sure wonderful) women d media hs ben naming. Thanks but no thanks.”

Nobody had bothered about the tweet until the last week of March when a leading newspaper quoted it in an article on the spat between the two Bollywood actors.

The Indian Christian Voice, an organization that claims to represent all Christian denominations in the country, on March 28 sent a criminal notice to Roshan for his what it said was unwarranted comment against the Pope.

Abraham Mathai, the organization’s national president, gave Roshan seven days to make a public apology.

The statement from Cardinal Gracias, who is the archbishop of Bombay, said: “We are given to understand from media reports that a popular Bollywood actor Hrithik Roshan had, in January, tweeted a flippant reference to the Pope, the Supreme Head of the Catholic Church, that could be construed as derogatory.”

Bombay is the old name of Mumbai, the headquarters of Hindi language cinemas popularly known as Bollywood.

Cardinal Gracias agreed the actor might not have had a “malicious intent” when he made that statement on the Pope, but it “could be deemed disrespectful as well as offensive to the Catholic community.”

The cardinal then asked Roshan to be careful in his remarks and become sensitive to the feelings of the community.