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A top Vatican official on Monday told Irish bishops in Rome for talks with Pope Benedict on the Irish Church''s vast pedophilia scandal that clergy who had sinned must admit blame for "abominable acts".

The message came in the sermon of a mass in St Peter''s Basilica shortly before the bishops started two days of crisis talks with the pope to formulate a response to the revelations of abuse by clergy that have shaken devoutly Catholic Ireland.

"Yes, storms spark fear, even those that rock the boat of the church because of the sins of its members," Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, number two in the Vatican hierarchy, told the bishops.

Bertone said trials within the church "are naturally harder and more humiliating" particularly when "men of the church were involved in such particularly abominable acts".

The meetings, the first of their kind at the Vatican in eight years, will discuss a plan of action and could lead to more prelates resigning in a shakeup of the Irish church hierarchy. Four have already quit.

Benedict, the 24 Irish bishops and top Vatican officials will hold three sessions in response to outrage in Ireland over the Murphy Commission Report, a damning indictment of child sex abuse by priests.

Bertone said God''s mercy could "pull one out of the deepest abyss" but "only if the sinner recognizes his blame in full truth".

The report, published in November, said the church in Ireland had "obsessively" concealed child abuse in the Dublin archdiocese from 1975 to 2004, and operated a policy of "don''t ask, don''t tell".