Catholic Cardinal: ‘Homosexual culture’ is to blame for child rape

A Catholic Cardinal has blamed sexual abuse scandals on a “homosexual culture” within the Church.

US Cardinal Raymond Burke, who serves as Patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta in Rome, added that homosexuality was a “tendency that is disordered” and needed to be “purified at the root.”

The 70-year-old former head of the influential Apostolic Signatura has a history of making anti-gay comments, having claimed in 2014 that parents should keep their children away from gay relatives.

Burke taking a break during the meeting to elect a new pope in 2013 (ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty)

He has also called homosexuality “evil” and “wrong,” and endorsed homophobia, saying that it was “simply announcing the truth, helping people to discriminate right from wrong in terms of their own activities.”

This week, a grand jury reported its belief that thousands of boys and girls in Pennsylvania had been raped and sexually abused by more than 300 Catholic priests.

In an interview with advocacy group Catholic Action for Faith and Family about these latest sexual abuse allegations in the Church, the Cardinal emphasised that homosexuality was what prompted the scandal.

Pope Benedict XVI and Burke (ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty)

“It was clear after the studies following the 2002 sexual abuse crisis that most of the acts of abuse were in fact homosexual acts committed with adolescent young men,” said Burke.

“There was a studied attempt to either overlook or to deny this.

“Now it seems clear in light of these recent terrible scandals that indeed there is a homosexual culture, not only among the clergy but even within the hierarchy, which needs to be purified at the root.

“It is of course a tendency that is disordered,” he added.

He said “homosexual culture” needed to be “purified at the root” (JOHANNES EISELE/AFP/Getty)

Burke then attributed some blame to the spread of contraceptives before once again condemning homosexuality.