ROME — The Archdiocese of Trento, in northern Italy, has dismissed a local priest who said in a television interview on Tuesday that in many cases of pedophilia the abused child was at fault. “Unfortunately there are children who seek affection because they don’t get it at home,” the priest, the Rev. Gino Flaim, told a reporter for LA7, an Italian channel. “And perhaps if they find some priest, he can succumb.” Pedophilia is, in any case, “a sin, and like all sins has to be accepted,” he said.

The archdiocese immediately banned the priest from preaching and revoked his position in a local parish. Father Flaim’s declarations “in no way represent the position” of the archdiocese “and that of the entire ecclesiastical community,” the archdiocese said in a statement published on its website.