Raymond Burke called homosexuality a "tendency that is disordered" (ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP/Getty)

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.

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.

“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.

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

“I think it has been considerably aggravated by the anti-life culture in which we live, namely the contraceptive culture that separates the sexual act from the conjugal union,” he said.

“The sexual act has no meaning whatsoever except between a man and a woman in marriage since the conjugal act is by its very nature for procreation.

“I believe that there needs to be an open recognition that we have a very grave problem of a homosexual culture in the Church, especially among the clergy and the hierarchy, that needs to be addressed honestly and efficaciously.”

The comments from Burke, who in 2015 said that people in Ireland who voted to legalise same-sex marriage were worse than Pagans, feed into the dangerous myth linking gay people with paedophilia.

The fallacy is experiencing a resurgence, thanks to alt-right trolls.

The falsehood has a long and hateful history, but just in the past year or so, it has been repeated by a Labour Party councillor who branded Pride marchers “paedophiles,” Spanish ultra-conservatives and a Danish imam.

And earlier this month, a sign with the message “Paedophiles are people too. Because Love Is Love” set against a rainbow background was posted around Willamette Primary School in Oregon.