VATICAN CITY (RNS) The head of Germany’s Catholic bishops marked Good Friday (April 2) by expressing his “sadness, horror and shame” at recent revelations of clerical sex abuse of children in Germany and other European countries.

Archbishop Robert Zollitsch of Freiburg, president of the German bishops’ conference, likened the spreading sex abuse scandal to other recent causes of “suffering in our lives,” including earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, and this week’s attack by terrorists on the Moscow subway.

“In many cases the victims could not put their injuries into words,” Zollitsch wrote, in a statement posted on his archdiocese’s Web site. “The wounds inflicted on them can scarcely be cured … This is a painful reality that we have to face.”

Writing on the day when Christians commemorate the death of Jesus, the archbishop likened children and young people molested by priests to the crucified Christ, as fellow victims of “injustice and violence.”

According to the statement, all pastors in Zollitsch’s archdiocese have been asked to include a special prayer in their Good Friday worship services, for the children and young people “injured in body and mind” by abuse.

Hundreds of abuse allegations have emerged so far this year involving children at German Catholic schools, prompting an investigation by prosecutors. A hotline set up by the church in Germany has received nearly 4,500 calls, according to Der Spiegel, a German magazine.

News reports last month have led to charges that Pope Benedict XVI himself, then known as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and serving as the archbishop of Munich, approved the 1980 reassignment to pastoral work of an accused pedophile who was later convicted of sexually abusing other children. An underling has claimed “full responsibility” for that decision, of which the Vatican says Benedict had no knowledge.