Vatican officials moved to stem the rising tide of anger as details emerged of separate pedophilia scandals involving Catholic priests in several European countries.
Spokesman Federico Lombardi defended the response of churches to pedophile priest scandals emerging in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands and elsewhere, saying Roman Catholic leaders had reacted swiftly and decisively.
He also sought to put the issue into perspective, saying the sexual abuse of children went far beyond church walls.
Church leaders in the countries affected “have faced the emergence of problems with timely and decisive action,” Lombardi said in a statement read out on Vatican Radio.
“They have demonstrated their desire for transparency and, in a certain sense, accelerated the emergence of the problem by inviting victims to speak out, even when the cases involved dated from many years ago,” he said.
Lombardi acknowledged that the Church’s moral responsibility made errors by clergy particularly reprehensible.
But he added: “All objective and well-informed people know that the question is much broader, and concentrating accusations against the Church alone gives a false perspective.”
For example, he said, data showed that during the period of the scandal in Austria, there had been 17 cases in Church institutions, compared with 510 in other settings.
Lombardi’s remarks came as the head of an Austrian monastery lost his job on Tuesday over allegations that he abused a boy while he was a trainee priest.
Elsewhere in Austria, a Catholic boarding school spoke out about another case in the 1980s, while revelations emerged in the press of a priest who had abused up to 20 children in his care.
And in the Netherlands, religious leaders on Tuesday ordered a “broad, external and independent” investigation into allegations of abuse at a monastery school in the east of the country in the 1960s.
“To the victims of abuse in Catholic boarding schools, the religious leaders and bishops offer their deep-felt condolences and apologies,” a statement said.
In Germany, Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on Monday accused the Vatican of hindering investigations into abuse in Catholic institutions.
A bishop in Germany on Friday acknowledged sexual abuse of members of a boys’ choir in the southern city of Regensburg that was directed for 30 years by Pope Benedict XVI’s elder brother Georg Ratzinger.
The pope was meanwhile preparing a letter to Irish Catholics shocked by revelations that the Church authorities covered up abuse of children by priests in the mainly Catholic country for three decades.
In Mexico last week, the ultra-conservative Legionaries of Christ, asked for forgiveness for the activities of its late founder, Marcial Maciel after two brothers claiming to be his sons said Maciel had abused them.
In 2006, the Vatican ordered him to retire from public life after earlier accusations of child sex abuse.
The first major predator priest scandal erupted in the US in 2002. The Church in the US estimated that there had been 14,000 victims of some 4,000 to 5,000 clerics since the 1960s.
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