From the article:

While the focus of the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic church centered on the United States for several years, abuse scandals have in recent years erupted in other countries as well, including Ireland, the Philippines, Poland, Mexico, Italy, Canada and elsewhere.

Neither the pope nor the Vatican has made any specific remarks about the abuse scandal in Germany, a Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Ciro Benedettini, said, but he added that Benedict’s previous statements on other such scandals — including most recently about Ireland — are certainly valid for Germany.

A Vatican statement last month, after a crisis meeting with Irish bishops, said Benedict called the sexual abuse of children “not only a heinous crime, but also a grave sin which offends God and wounds the dignity of the human person created in his image.”

and then a bit later:

“Sexual abuse of children is not a specific problem of the Catholic church. It has neither to do with celibacy, nor with homosexuality nor with Catholic sexual doctrine,” Zollitsch told weekly Welt am Sonntag earlier this week.

For the love of God, the Vatican MUST take a strong stand on this. Must. It’s creepy, really, how completely clueless they seem to be about the devastation to young lives caused by these incidents, and that these things will continue unless a very strong zero-tolerance stand is taken. They MUST find out why these folks are allowed into the priesthood to begin with, and they MUST refuse to allow them to remain in the priesthood.

I’m not at all surprised to see these things now popping up in other countries. There is nothing about the USA that would make priests here more prone to being abusive than those in other countries.