Jewish groups around the world have reacted with shock after Pope Benedict's personal preacher compared attacks on the Church and the pope over a sexual abuse scandal to "collective violence" against Jews.

The Pope's personal preacher, Father Raniero Cantalamessa, made the comments during a Friday sermon in St Peter's Basilica.

Father Cantalamessa, speaking with the Pope sitting nearby, said Jews throughout history had been the victims of "collective violence" and drew comparisons between Jewish suffering and attacks on the Church.

"The use of stereotypes, the shifting of personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt remind me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism," he quoted from a letter he said he had received from a Jewish friend.

A former president of Italy's Jewish communities, Amos Luzzatto, says he is finds the preacher's comments dumbfounding.

Rome chief rabbi Riccardo Di Segni, who welcomed the Pope in the capital's synagogue last January, also says the comments are "really in bad taste".

Jewish leaders around the world used words like repugnant, obscene and offensive to describe the sermon, particularly, as chief rabbi Di Segni noted, it came on the day that for centuries Christians prayed for the conversion of the Jews who were once held collectively responsible for Jesus' death.

An international Jewish rights group spokesman, Rabbi Marvin Hier, also condemned the comments.

"How can you compare the collective guilt assigned to the Jews, which caused the deaths of tens of millions of innocent people, to perpetrators who abuse their faith and their calling by sexually abusing children?" he said.

A Vatican spokesman says the comparison "is absolutely not the line of the Vatican and of the Catholic Church".

Victims of sexual abuse also criticised Father Cantalamessa.

"This ridiculous attempt to hide the crimes of the [Church] hierarchy inside of Jewish suffering shows just how far this pope seems willing to go to stop the truth from emerging," said Peter Isely, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP).

Meanwhile the Vatican's newspaper continued its campaign against the media for its reports on alleged cover-ups of sexual abuse of children by priests, saying the Pope had become the target of "despicable campaign of defamation".

- Reuters