ROME — In his retirement, Pope Benedict XVI is apparently tired of hiding.

The former pontiff, who declared he would “remain hidden to the world” when he became the first pope in six centuries to abdicate in 2013, has released a 6,000-word letter that puts the blame for the clerical sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church on the sexual revolution of the 1960s, the disappearance of God from public discourse in the West and what he considers dangerously liberal theological ideas that eroded morality after the church reforms of the Second Vatican Council.

Among his claims, Benedict wrote that the sexual revolution deemed pedophilia as “allowed and appropriate,” and that the landmark social protests of 1968 for “all-out sexual freedom” as well as sex education for young children and nudity in advertising prompted a “mental collapse” that he linked to “a propensity for violence.”

“That is why sex films were no longer allowed on airplanes,” he wrote to illustrate his point, “because violence would break out among the small community of passengers.”

The letter, written for the German church magazine Klerusblatt, was published overnight by conservative Catholic websites that have consistently exalted Benedict and criticized his successor, Pope Francis.