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The Vatican''s second highest authority said on Monday that the sex scandals haunting the Catholic Church were linked to homosexuality, rather than vows of celibacy, among priests.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican''s secretary of state, asserted that "many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relationship between celibacy and paedophilia."

But he added that others had shown "that there is a relationship between homosexuality and paedophilia," and "that is the problem."

Bertone was speaking during a news conference on Monday in the Chilean capital Santiago.

He also asserted that the church had never impeded investigations of paedophilia by priests.

Rolando Jimenez, president of the Movement for the Integration and Freedom of Homosexuals in Chile, angrily refuted Bertone''s claims.

"The Catholic Church heirarchy will at some point have to apologise for this perversion, for the sinister attitude of this Vatican gentleman."

"We are certain that there is no relationship between paedophilia and homosexuality," he added.

Bertone''s comments are likely to further stoke the worst crisis to engulf the Catholic Church in years, as further accusations pile up that the Vatican, and even the pontiff Benedict XVI as Cardinal Ratzinger, obstructed investigations into abuse.

While running the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Ratzinger resisted pleas from a California diocese to laicise a priest who had pleaded no contest to lewd conduct for tying up and molesting two boys, according to correspondence obtained by The Associated Press last week.

The Vatican also came under fire after Benedict''s personal preacher, the Reverend Raniero Cantalamessa, quoted a "Jewish friend", who likened accusations against the pope in the clergy sex abuse cover-up scandals to collective violence against Jews.

He made the remarks in a Good Friday sermon at St. Peter''s Basilica, which Pope Benedict XVI attended.

Jewish leaders, and even some top Catholic churchmen, were angered by the comments, and in the ensuing furore the Vatican was forced to distance itself.