In direct contradiction to the views of the Archbishop of Westminster, the Right Reverend Crispian Hollis, Bishop of Portsmouth, said it was children, not the Church, who were the real victims of the crisis — and that media criticism of the Church was justified.

In an open letter to his diocese, Bishop Hollis said: “We must not forget that we are in the relentless media spotlight because children have been sexually abused and we have not always handled this matter in a proper way.”

Bishop Hollis’s letter, published in the Portsmouth diocesan newspaper, is the clearest sign yet of dissent within the Church over the child abuse crisis. It added: “We are at fault for our mistakes, however uncomfortable and unhappy that may make us feel. The Church is not the victim in all this — the children are.”

He is the first member of the Church hierarchy directly to contradict Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the Archbishop of Westminster, who has criticised media coverage of paedophilia in the Church as unwarranted.

Last Sunday the cardinal wrote to parishes in his archdiocese of Westminster saying: “As you know, not only I personally, but the whole Catholic Church has been under attack from some quarters.”

The Catholic press condemned the Bishop of Portsmouth’s criticism as unwarranted and foolish.

The Catholic Herald said that while “most English and Welsh Catholics accepted the archbishop’s reading of recent events, one, Bishop Crispian Hollis, clearly did not”.

It criticised the bishop for defending the media with “reference to the cardinal’s attempt to defend himself”.

Contrary to the bishop’s belief, “the media were not ‘doing their job’. What they were doing was conducting a disreputable smear campaign against the Cardinal and the Catholic Church,” the newspaper said.

Mgr Kieron Conry, Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, told The Times yesterday that he, too, believed the scandal could have been handled differently.

“I can quite understand the emotional response of someone who has taken the brunt of this. But a more rational response is to say that if we have done wrong we deserve to be scrutinised and castigated.”

Both bishops have responsibility for the Catholic Children’s Society, where some of the abuse cases are alleged to have taken place. Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor is currently at the centre of a police investigation into whether he ignored the activities of paedophile priests while Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.

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