VATICAN CITY – The Vatican on Tuesday defended the response of churches to paedophile priest scandals emerging in various countries, saying Roman Catholic leaders had reacted swiftly and decisively.

Spokesman Federico Lombardi also sought to put the issue into perspective, saying the sexual abuse of children went far beyond church walls.

Church leaders in Austria, Germany, The Netherlands and elsewhere "confronted the emergence of the problem rapidly and decisively," Lombardi said in a note read out on Vatican Radio.

Lombardi's remarks came as the head of an Austrian monastery lost his job Tuesday over allegations he abused a boy while he was a trainee priest.

The victim, now 53, told Austrian national radio Oe1 that after years of silence he confronted Bruno Becker, abbot of Sankt Peter monastery in the northern city of Salzburg, last November.

The abbot admitted the abuse and offered him 5,000 euros ($6,790) to take no further action, he said.

The money was meant as compensation rather than hush money, Salzburg's Archbishop Alois Kothgasser insisted on Oe1 radio.

Elsewhere in Austria, a Catholic boarding school spoke out about another case in the 1980s, while revelations emerged in the press of a priest who had abused up to 20 children in his care.

Lombardi acknowledged that the Church's moral responsibility made errors by clergy particularly reprehensible.

But he added: "All objective and informed people know that the issue is much wider, and to focus accusations only on the Church leads to a skewed perspective."

For example, he said, data showed that during the period of the scandal in Austria, there were 17 cases in Church institutions, compared with 510 in other settings.

German Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger on Monday accused the Vatican of hindering investigations into abuse in Catholic institutions.

A bishop in Germany on Friday acknowledged sexual abuse of members of a boys' choir in the southern city of Regensburg that was directed for 30 years by Pope Benedict XVI's elder brother Georg Ratzinger.

But Lombardi said authorities "showed a willingness for transparency and, in a way, speeded the revelations of problems by asking the victims to come forward even in very old (abuse) cases".

Dutch religious leaders ordered Tuesday a "broad, external and independent" investigation into allegations of abuse at a monastery school in the east of the country in the 1960s.

"To the victims of abuse in Catholic boarding schools, the religious leaders and bishops offer their deepfelt condolences and apologies," a statement said.

The pope was meanwhile preparing a letter to Irish Catholics shocked by revelations that the Church authorities covered up abuse of children by priests in the mainly Catholic country for three decades.

One priest in Ireland admitted sexually abusing more than 100 children, while another said he had abused minors on a fortnightly basis over 25 years.

The first major predator priest scandal erupted in the United States in 2002 when the then-archbishop of Boston confessed to having shielded a priest he knew had sexually abused youngsters.

The Church in the United States estimated that there had been 14,000 victims of some 4,000 to 5,000 clerics since the 1960s.

US Catholic dioceses have paid out billions of dollars in compensation to victims of abuse, including some 436 million dollars in 2008 alone.

In a visit to the United States in April 2008, the pope spoke of the shame and suffering that abusive priests had brought upon the Church, but stopped short of a direct apology.

In Sydney three months later, he went further and called for compensation for the victims of sexual abuse, ordered Australian clergy to help them recover from their ordeals and demanded that abuser priests be punished.