VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict XVI faced new criticism Saturday after his preacher likened attacks on the Catholic Church over the paedophile priest furore to anti-Semitism, further marring Easter Week celebrations.

Jewish groups and those representing victims of abuse by Catholic priests denounced the remarks by the pope’s personal preacher during a Good Friday homily.

Rome’s chief rabbi joined the chorus of criticism, saying in an interview published Saturday: “It’s an inappropriate parallel and of dubious taste.” The comparison was not made on “any day, but on Good Friday, that is the saddest day in the history of relations between Christians and Jews,” Riccardo Di Segni told the Italian daily La Stampa.

The parallel was drawn in a letter that Father Raniero Cantalamessa, the preacher to the Papal Household, said he received from an unnamed Jewish friend.

“The stereotyping, the transfer of personal responsibility and blame to a collective blame reminds me of the most shameful aspects of anti-Semitism,” he wrote, according to Cantalamessa.

Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi later told AFP the comments were from “a letter read by the preacher and not the official position of the Vatican.” The new woes for the 82-year-old pope came as he prepared to lead an Easter vigil in St Peter’s Basilica late Saturday.

Benedict made no mention of the child abuse controversy during a traditional procession later Friday at Rome’s Colosseum re-enacting Jesus Christ’s Passion.

But the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), the largest and most active of such groups in the United States, denounced the remarks, saying they insulted “both abuse victims and Jewish people.” “The remarks are shameful, inaccurate and a complete distortion of history,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, the founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, demanding an apology from the pope himself.

The child abuse scandal has engulfed much of Europe and the United States, prompting harsh criticism of the Vatican’s handling of the scourge.

The pope himself faces allegations that, as archbishop of Munich and later as the Vatican’s chief morals enforcer, he helped to protect predator priests.