Sex discrimination is destined to continue in the scorching fires of Hell, according to a study approved by the Vatican which suggests that men are most likely to commit lustful sins whereas women are beholden to pride.

The men, it seems, are the ones whose souls end up being pelted with fire and brimstone, while the women's souls are more likely to be broken on a wheel.

Monsignor Wojciech Giertych, personal theologian to Pope Benedict XVI and the papal household, said there was “no sexual equality” when it came to sin. “Men and women sin in different ways,” he wrote in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper.

Pride ranks only at No 5 for men, who are likely to have indulged in so much lust and gluttony that they are too slothful to feel angry, proud, envious or avaricious. Women are not averse to lust, but are primarily occupied with pride, envy and anger. Sloth does not set in until after gluttony and avarice.

“When you look at vices from the point of view of the difficulties they create you find that men experiment in a different way from women,” Monsignor Giertych said. His own observations had confirmed the survey, an analysis of confessional data carried out by Roberto Busa, 96, a Jesuit priest celebrated for his computerised study of the works of St Thomas Aquinas.

He said: “Diverse cultural contexts generate diverse habits - but human nature remains the same.”

Monsignor Giertych said that human weaknesses could “purify faith” provided that they were “admitted and offered up to God”.

However, 30 per cent of Catholics no longer considered confession to a priest necessary, and 10 per cent even said that it “impeded their personal dialogue with God”.

Many believers accept the broad seven deadly sins or “capital vices” laid down in the 6th century by Pope Gregory the Great and popularised in the Middle Ages by Aquinas, and by Dante in The Inferno.

Last year the Vatican added seven new ones: genetic modification; human experimentations: polluting the environment; social injustice; causing poverty; “financial gluttony”; and taking or selling drugs.

Bishop Gianfranco Girotti, head of the Apostolic Penitentiary, the Vatican body that oversees confessions, said that two mortal sins which continued to preoccupy the Vatican were abortion and paedophilia. The latter had even infected the clergy itself, and so had exposed the “human and institutional fragility of the Church”.