Pope's meeting with Irish bishops enters second day

Pope Benedict and 24 Irish bishops are into day two of discussions over decades of child abuse in the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland.

The bishops were summoned to the Vatican to discuss the Church's response to last year's Ryan and Murphy reports, which detailed a cover-up of decades of abuse at the hands of parish priests and clergy in charge of Church-run institutions like schools and orphanages.

Each of the bishops has been invited to give seven minute presentations on their knowledge of the abuse over the course of the two-day summit.

Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, said in a homily prior to the start of the talks that faith in the Church could only be restored if "sinners acknowledge their own blame in the fullness of truth", reports the Associated Press.

The abuse scandals were, he said, a "most dangerous storm, that which touches the heart of believers, shaking their faith and threatening their ability to trust in God".

Cardinal Bertone is one of several senior Vatican aides present at the talks.

The Irish delegation is being led by the head of the Catholic Church in Ireland Archbishop Sean Brady and includes the Bishop of Galway Martin Drennan, the only one of five bishops named in the Murphy report not to have resigned.

Archbishop Brady is due to make a public statement after the summit ends at lunchtime today.

Pope Benedict has expressed his intention to write a pastoral letter to Catholics in Ireland addressing the abuse scandal.

He said he was "disturbed and distressed" by the findings of the Murphy report, which accused the Church of putting its own reptutation before the welfare of children by failing to report abuse to the authorities and moving suspect priests to other parishes where they were free to abuse more children.