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The Vatican has defended the Pope against allegations that he was responsible for delaying Church action against a US paedophile priest.A spokesman said the claims, which stem from a letter signed by Benedict XVI when he was a senior Vatican official, had been taken out of context.
AP published a letter, signed by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 1985, resisting Stephen Kiesle's defrocking.
The Vatican says he was exercising due caution before sacking the priest.
A leading British Catholic commentator said the issue had exposed an ongoing power struggle between senior Vatican cardinals that started during the papacy of Pope Benedict's predecessor, John Paul II.
Series of scandals
In the letter, Cardinal Ratzinger - who was at the time the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - said the "good of the universal Church" needed to be considered in any defrocking, AP reported.
A Vatican spokesman said the letter was part of a long correspondence and should not be taken out of context.
"The press office doesn't believe it is necessary to respond to every single document taken out of context regarding particular legal situations," said the spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi.
He acknowledged that the Church had lost public trust and said Church law could no longer be placed above civil laws if that trust were to be recovered.
This is an abrupt change of tone by the Vatican, says BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott.
Officials had previously accused critics of trying to smear the Pope personally and only last weekend said he should ignore petty gossip directed at him, our correspondent adds.
The Catholic Church has been hit by a series of child abuse scandals in recent years, including in Ireland, the US, Germany and Norway, and has faced criticism for failing to deal adequately with the problem.
On Friday, the Vatican urged Catholic dioceses around the world to co-operate with police investigating sex abuse allegations against priests.
The Vatican says the Pope is willing to meet more victims of clerical abuse, while the Church is set to publish an internet guide as to how bishops deal with accusations of sexual abuse.
'Grave significance'
AP said Fr Kiesle was sentenced to three years of probation in 1978 for lewd conduct with two young boys in San Francisco.
It said the Oakland diocese had recommended Kiesle's removal in 1981 but that that did not happen until 1987.
Cardinal Ratzinger took over the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with sex abuse cases, in 1981.
AP says the 1985 correspondence, written in Latin, shows the cardinal saying that Kiesle's removal would need careful review.
Cardinal Ratzinger urged "as much paternal care as possible" for Kiesle.
Kiesle was sentenced to six years in prison in 2004 after admitting molesting a young girl in 1995.
Kiesle is now 63 and is on the registered sex offenders list in California.
Power struggle
While the scandal has prompted calls for the Pope's resignation, a columnist for Britain's leading Catholic newspaper said Cardinal Ratzinger had actually wanted to crack down hard on paedophile priests in the 1980s.
Clifford Longley said the cardinal was thwarted by other senior Vatican figures who wanted to cover up the sex-abuse crisis, until he was given overall control of the issue in 2001.
"Ratzinger was thwarted on several occasions... by people surrounding the Pope, and indeed possibly by John Paul II himself, who did not appear to be taking the situation anything like as seriously as Ratzinger," said Mr Longley.
Since Benedict XVI was elected as Pope in 2006, things had changed radically, added Mr Longley, but the power-struggle was ongoing.
The Vatican has ruled out any possibility of a papal resignation over the scandal.This article is from the BBC News website. ? British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.