A vandal has spray-painted an abusive message on the house in southern Germany in which Pope Benedict was born.

Police spokesman Konrad Rutzinger says the graffiti was sprayed in blue on the front door of the house, a three-storey, 264-year-old building in Marktl am Inn in the predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria.

He says the message seems to be linked to the abuse scandals that have engulfed the Catholic Church.

"F*** yourselves," read the graffiti, according to photographs published in the German press. It has been hastily painted over.

A recent survey found that a quarter of Germany's Catholics were considering quitting the Church in the wake of reports of hundreds of cases of sexual abuse by clerics, some many decades old.

Last week clerics in Germany used Easter sermons to pray for the victims as public sentiment against the Church turned decidedly negative.

- Reuters