Sex Scandal, Vatican Child Sex Abuse Cover-up | featured news

The recent scandal over handling of child abuse in the Catholic church has again focused attention on celibacy.

Pope Benedict XVI was "deeply affected" by a meeting with victims of abuse by Catholic clergy, he said Wednesday, in his first public comments on the scandal in more than a month.

Pope Benedict said the sexual abuse scandal shaking Roman Catholicism showed the Church needed to do penance for its sins, in a rare public reference by the pope to pedophilia in the priesthood.

The Vatican says there was no cover-up in the sexual abuse case by an American priest accused of molesting 200 deaf boys and denounces what it calls attempts to smear Pope Benedict XVI.