The researchers tried to identify a broader explanation for how the church became an environment in which sexual abuse could flourish.

Celibacy itself, they said, may not a factor for sexual abuse, but a commitment to such a life “requires an extensive examination of one’s own emotions, eroticism and sexuality.”

The researchers also pointed at the church’s stance toward homosexuality. Homosexuality, they said, is also not a risk factor for abuse, but “there is an urgent need to reconsider the fundamentally negative attitude of the Catholic Church toward the ordination of homosexual men.” The researchers urged the church to follow the findings of “modern sexual medicine” and promote an “open, tolerance-promoting atmosphere.”

The report also singled out the “hierarchical-authoritarian system” of the church, saying it “can lead the priest to adopt an attitude of dominating nonordained individuals in interactions because he holds a superior position by virtue of his ministry and ordination.”

Victims’ groups and critics say the study is incomplete, because researchers had access only to records provided by the church, as well as reports submitted anonymously by victims over the internet.

Harald Dressing, a professor at the Mannheim Institute of Psychology, who coordinated the study, said that researchers had found indications that some church records had been “manipulated or destroyed,” leading them to believe that the actual number of victims may be much greater than what they could document.

“This report gives numbers and quotas that are only the tip of the iceberg,” Mr. Dressing said, “but from our study, we have been able to analyze this iceberg. And as we see it, the discussion about the structures that made it easy to abuse are more important than the numbers themselves.”