Pope Benedict XVI has ventured out of retirement to publish an essay blaming the Catholic Church’s sex abuse scandal on the sexual revolution of the 1960s and church laws that protected priests.
His analysis was immediately criticized as “catastrophically irresponsible” — a conflict with efforts by his successor, Pope Francis, to lead the church out of its crisis.
“Why did pedophilia reach such proportions? Ultimately, the reason is the absence of God,” Benedict wrote, in the 6,000-word essay published Thursday in the German monthly Klerusblatt, the Catholic News Agency and other conservative media.
Benedict traced the start of the crisis to the ’60s, citing the appearance of sex in films in his native Bavaria and the formation of “homosexual cliques” in seminaries “which acted more or less openly and significantly changed the climate.