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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.

With the Roman Catholic Church facing a series of pedophilia scandals, some observers have begun to ask whether the tradition of celibacy in the priesthood has contributed to child abuse.

A leading cardinal, making an unusual address in defense of Pope Benedict at the start of Easter Sunday Mass, said the Church would not be intimidated by "petty gossip" about sexual abuse of children by priests.

Reports that the Vatican intends to force the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland to resign are denied.

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.

Two arrests have been made in a string of deliberately set church fires in east Texas, a fire official said Sunday.

A gunman wearing a hooded sweatshirt and flanked by two companions walked into a San Francisco Bay area church and stalked the aisles before opening fire during a Sunday service, wounding two teenagers, police said.

President Obama, speaking today from the pulpit of a church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sometimes spoke, called on the congregation to rally around the spirit that had helped their ancestors pursue a long road to freedom.

Arsonists in Malaysia struck at a convent school and a fifth church on Sunday amid rising tensions between majority Muslims and Christians over the use of the word "Allah" to describe the Christian God.