Retired Pope Benedict XVI has published a letter which blames clerical sex abuse on the “all-out sexual freedom” of the 1960s.
The former pontiff said the sexual revolution had led to homosexuality in Catholic establishments.
He said paedophilia did not become “acute” until the late 1980s and was caused by “absence of God”.
The only solution was “obedience and love for our Lord Jesus Christ,” the former Pope said.
Published in the German Catholic magazine Klerusblatt, the 5,500-word letter is divided into three parts.
The first part laments the 1960s as a time when “previously normative standards regarding sexuality collapsed entirely”.
Next, the letter examines how the sexual revolution affected priests, creating “homosexual cliques” in seminaries.
The letter concludes with the solution that “we ourselves once again begin to live by God and unto Him”.
In 2013, the former pontiff was the first to resign in almost 600 years.
He thanked his replacement, Pope Francis, “for everything he does to show us, again and again, the light of God, which has not disappeared, even today”.
Pope Francis said in a letter in published in 2018 that the Church “did not act in a timely manner” on the issue of child sexual abuse, and “showed no care for the little ones; we abandoned them”.
