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Benedict XVI’s words are in striking contrast with the Vatican’s policy under Pope Francis

Retired Pope Benedict XVI made a rare public statement Thursday with an essay on the Catholic Church’s sex-abuse crisis, linking it to a breakdown in sexual morality in the 1960s and warning against an excessive focus on the rights of accused abusers.

The retired pope’s words are in striking contrast with the Vatican’s policy under Pope Francis, which has increasingly emphasized the rights of the accused and reduced punishments for abusers on appeal.

Pope Benedict’s statement could provide encouragement to proponents of the “zero tolerance” approach to clerical abuse, which requires the removal from ministry of any priest found guilty of even one instance of abuse of a minor. Bishops in the U.S. and a handful of mostly English-speaking countries promote zero tolerance for use by the church at large, but the Vatican hasn’t endorsed the policy for global application.

.. Pope Benedict’s essay also deviates from statements by Pope Francis, who generally has played down sexual morality and attributed the abuse crisis largely to a culture of “clericalism,”or excessive power in the hands of the Catholic hierarchy.Pope Benedict wrote that his 6,000-word essay, published Thursday by German, Italian and English-language outlets including the Catholic News Agency, was in response to an international summit on sex abuse held at the Vatican in February.

“Since I myself had served in a position of responsibility as shepherd of the church at the time of the public outbreak of the crisis, and during the run-up to it, I had to ask myself—even though, as emeritus, I am no longer directly responsible—what I could contribute to a new beginning,” he writes, noting that he obtained the permission of Pope Francis to publish his thoughts.

During his own pontificate, Pope Benedict extended the statute of limitations for abuse of minors and Vatican judges hardly ever reduced the sentences of defrocked abusers on appeal.

In his essay, Pope Benedict, who will turn 92 on Tuesday, blames clerical sex abuse of minors in large part on the sexual revolution of the late 1960s, which he says was fomented by sexual education in schools. Increasingly available pornography in that period promoted violence and revealing styles of clothing “equally provoked aggression,” he writes.

“Part of the physiognomy of the Revolution of ’68 was that pedophilia was then also diagnosed as allowed and appropriate,” Pope Benedict wrote.

At the same time, Catholic theologians largely abandoned the “natural law” school of moral philosophy in favor of a relativism that denied the existence of absolute right or wrong, he wrote.

The combination of those trends led to a corruption of the clergy. Influential “homosexual cliques” formed in seminaries and students there sometimes watched pornographic films, while the future pope’s own theological writings “were hidden away, like bad literature, and only read under the desk.”

Pope Benedict called for more rigor in prosecuting cases of clerical sex abuse by church authorities. An overemphasis on the rights of the accused has at times made it practically impossible to convict abusers and that mentality remains prevalent, he wrote.

“This is an alarming situation which must be considered and taken seriously by the pastors of the church,” he wrote.

A prominent Italian activist against clerical sex abuse rejected Pope Benedict’s diagnosis of the roots of the crisis.

“The times have changed and the church hasn’t been able to do likewise” on matters of sexuality, said Francesco Zanardi, spokesman for Rete L’ABUSO. “But he would do better to look at all those times that the church has closed an eye and covered up” in cases of clerical sex abuse.