VATICAN CITY — The Vatican on Wednesday tried to defuse growing anger over remarks by the pope's top aide that the problem behind the pedophile priest scandals is homosexuality and not the church's celibacy requirement.

Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Holy See's secretary of state, outraged gay advocacy groups, politicians and even the French government with his remarks Monday in Chile.

"Many psychologists and psychiatrists have demonstrated that there is no relation between celibacy and pedophilia," the Italian cardinal said. "But many others have demonstrated, I have been told recently, that there is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia. That is true. That is the problem."

Responding to reporters' questions, Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi contended that Bertone was not talking about pedophilia in society at large, nor making any medical or psychological assertions. Rather, Bertone was "evidently" referring to statistics, recently supplied by the Holy See's own prosecutor handling sex abuse allegations against clergy, Lombardi said in a written statement.

Lombardi cited some of the statistics, from a March interview in a Catholic newspaper with Monsignor Charles Scicluna, the Vatican's abuse prosecutor.

The spokesman noted that Scicluna said the allegations involving "pedophilia in the strict sense" accounted for 10 percent of the cases, 60 percent of cases involved adolescents in homosexual relations, while the other 30 percent of cases involved adolescents in heterosexual relations.

In all, Scicluna told the publication of the Italian bishops conference, 300 of some 3,000 cases that his office handled from 2001 to this year involved "acts of true and actual pedophilia."