The new revelations of abuse, mainly at Catholic schools, in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands as well as the recent report on abuse in Ireland "mobilize the church to elaborate appropriate responses and should be inserted in the context of a problem that is wider and involves the safeguarding of children and youths from sexual abuse in society," Lombardi said.

Sexual abuse at the hands of a priest or other church worker is "particularly reprehensible," he said, but those who have the good of children at heart must recognize that the problem is present in many other sectors of society and "to concentrate the accusations only against the church leads to falsifying one's perspective."

Lombardi said German Chancellor Angela Merkel was right to convoke a round table of people involved in the fields of education and social services for children to examine the phenomenon of child sexual abuse from a broader perspective.

"The church naturally is ready to participate," he said.

The bishops' conferences of the countries where the sex abuse scandal has returned to the headlines are reviewing all of their procedures and are setting up offices to help the victims, he said.

"While no one can deny the seriousness of the turmoil the church is going through, we cannot hesitate to do everything possible so that positive results are achieved for improving the protection of children and youth in the church and in society, and for the purification of the church itself," Lombardi said.

The spokesman's comments came the day after the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, said the Vatican fully supports the efforts of German bishops to investigate claims of child sexual abuse in Catholic institutions, even if the cases are decades old. The article followed a letter posted March 5 on the web site of the diocese of Regensburg, acknowledging past cases of sexual abuse of young students attending the Domspatzen, the school that trains the elite boys' choir of the Regensburg Cathedral.

Initial news reports said the abuse may have occurred while Msgr. Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict XVI, was serving as choirmaster at the school. But the Regensburg diocese said the cases occurred in the late 1950s, while Ratzinger held the post from 1964 to 1994.

Ratzinger told the Italian daily La Repubblica that no cases of priestly pedophilia had come to his attention during his tenure there, but that he would be willing to testify should he be summoned by German judicial authorities.

In an online letter addressed to students and parents, Regensburg Bishop Gerhard Ludwig Muller spoke of two former priests at the school who had been involved in incidents of pedophilia in the 1950s and subsequently jailed. The letter asked anyone with information regarding similar episodes to come forward and said it was seeking specifically a former student who had told German news media that he had been abused at the school.

As has happened in the United States, Ireland, Australia and other countries, dozens of Germans have made claims recently that they suffered sexual abuse as children while attending Catholic schools. And as in those situations, the church leadership has been accused of protecting priests rather than children.

Cardinal Walter Kasper, a senior German prelate and the Vatican's chief ecumenical official, said in an interview in La Repubblica that priestly sexual abuse must be punished and the church must take responsibility.

"Enough! We need serious housecleaning in our church," he said, adding that "the Pope is certainly not standing idly by."

The leadership of the German bishops' conference was to meet with Pope Benedict March 12 at the Vatican. The visit was scheduled previously, but the rapidly developing sex abuse scandal was sure to be discussed.