The leader of the largest US Roman Catholic archdiocese has apologised for what he called a "terrible sin and crime" as the Church confirmed it would pay a record $660m to people who were sexually abused.

|PIC1|The archdiocese led by Cardinal Roger Mahony agreed to pay 508 victims, the largest-ever group settlement.

He said: "I have come to understand far more deeply that I ever could the impact of this terrible sin and crime that has affected their lives.

"There really is no way to go back and give them that innocence that was taken from them. Once again, I apologise to anyone who has been offended, who has been abused. It should not have happened, and it will not happen again."

Nurse Mary Ferrell, 59, who was abused in the late 1950s, said the payment will not ease all her suffering. According to Reuters, she said: "I appreciate the size of it because I think it shows the culpability and guilt of the Catholic Church. It will change my life in that my life will become easier financially, but I don't think that it is going to cure all the pain and suffering."

The Catholic Church has faced abuse allegations from victims saying that Church leaders often knew of the abuse but did not do enough to stop it, sometimes moving priests known to have abused minors to new parishes instead of defrocking them or reporting them to authorities.

The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Archbishop Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, previously acknowledged that he had made a mistake while in a previous post in the 1980s by allowing a paedophile to carry on working as a priest.

However, a new inquiry has found that measures to tackle sex abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales have improved, although reforms have now alienated some clergy.

The Cumberlege Commission said much had been achieved in the five years since the Nolan report told the Church to root out child abuse in its parishes, but some clergy still felt vulnerable to false complaints, it said.

The report - welcomed by the Church - called for a new independent body to supervise child protection work.

In 2001, Lord Nolan made a series of recommendations following a string of child sex abuse scandals, and this latest report was intended to review the Church's progress in implementing them.

The report was led by Baroness Julia Cumberlege and found that out of Lord Nolan's 83 recommendations, 79 had been at least partially addressed.

By 2006, more than 85 per cent of the 2,400 Catholic parishes in England and Wales had local child protection representatives in place, the report found.

It said: "Five years on and the church can quite rightly take pride in the progress it has made and in beginning to distance itself from negative public perceptions."

But it warned there was a risk of reversing some of the important gains if tensions in the Church were not addressed.

The report identified the concerns of one lobby of priests who believe the system for dealing with allegations against them leaves them "exposed" and breaches Canon Law and natural justice .

There were also concerns among some clergy members that child protection policies and procedures were "too long, over bureaucratic and impenetrable".

The report also warned of staff shortages at the Catholic Office for the Protection of Children and Vulnerable Adults - the unit set up by the Church to help promote child protection.

On these issues, the review makes a series of recommendations including the adoption of one set of child protection policies across the Church, and for bishops to take a more active role in child protection. It also outlines plans for a new independent body called the 'National Safeguarding Commission' to give child protection work greater influence in the Church.

Cardinal Murphy-O'Connor welcomed the publication of the report, which he said was "thorough, painstaking and independent".

He said it was now important for all those in the Church to study the findings and incorporate recommendations into dioceses and parishes' structures.