Materialism and a sense of self-sufficiency are obstacles to a Christian life of charity, the Pope said.

Instead of looking first to God and then to the well-being of others, people often have an attitude of “indifference and disinterest born of selfishness and masked as a respect for ‘privacy’.”

He said that God’s commandment to love “demands that we acknowledge our responsibility toward those who, like ourselves, are creatures and children of God”.

The annual Lenten message was presented during a Vatican news conference by Cardinal Robert Sarah, president of the Pontifical Council Cor Unum, the office which handles the Pope’s charitable giving, along with Mgr Segundo Tejado Munoz, the council’s undersecretary.

The cardinal highlighted the Pope’s call for “fraternal correction” and the Church’s prophetic mission in denouncing situations of injustice and poverty in the world.

To overcome such injustices, one must get to the moral roots of such situations, he said. Corruption, accumulation of wealth, violence, and living off the work of others without contributing are all cancers that weaken a society from within, the cardinal said.

But, he said, the true root of the world’s injustices stems from ignoring or denying God’s existence. By not acknowledging there is a creator and Lord who is greater than man, society degenerates into a “conflictual individualism” and a struggle of one person against another, Cardinal Sarah said.

The theme of the 2012 Lenten message was taken from St Paul’s Letter to the Hebrews: “Let us be concerned for each other, to stir a response in love and good works.”

The Pope outlined his message with three points taken from St Paul’s letter: “concern for others, reciprocity and personal holiness.”

Concern for others, the Pope said, means wanting what is good physically, morally and spiritually for one’s neighbour. But he noted that contemporary culture “seems to have lost the sense of good and evil”.

“There is a real need to reaffirm that good does exist and will prevail,” the Pope said, defining good as “whatever gives, protects and promotes life, brotherhood and communion”.

The Pope warned against what he called “spiritual anaesthesia”, which numbs people to the suffering of others. Only a “humbleness of heart and the personal experience of suffering can awaken within us a sense of compassion and empathy,” he said.

The suffering of others is not only physical or material, he said, but it is also spiritual, and he encouraged Christians to remember their “spiritual responsibility” toward their neighbour. He called for a renewal of a forgotten aspect of the Christian life, that is, “fraternal correction.”

Fraternal correction, he said, is a kind of Christian charity that speaks out against people indulging in sin.

“We must not remain silent before evil,” he said.

Often, “out of human regard or purely personal convenience”, Christians fail to warn others against ways of thinking and behaving that are contrary to the truth.

The reluctance to confront others in the name of truth, he said, stems from a world view dominated by individualism, which “accepts any moral choice in the name of personal freedom”, which then makes people blind to physical suffering and the spiritual and moral demands of life.

However, God wants Christians to help and encourage each other to strive for the truth, for good and holy lives, he said.

Fraternal correction must never be motivated by a spirit of accusation or recrimination, but instead be both loving and admonishing, as God is with his children, he added.

“Both our sins and our acts of love have a social dimension,” which is why the Church asks forgiveness for the sins of its members and at the same time rejoices in examples of virtue and charity in the Church, he said.

The Pope said time was precious and people must not become lukewarm about performing good works and using their God-given spiritual and material riches for the benefit of others.

In a world “which demands of Christians a renewed witness of love and fidelity to the Lord, may all of us feel the urgent need to anticipate one another in charity, service and good works,” he said.

Marie Collins, who was abused at the age of 13 by a hospital chaplain in Dublin, told an audience at the Gregorian University in Rome: “Those fingers that would abuse my body the night before were the next morning holding and offering me the Sacred Host. The hands that held the camera to photograph my exposed body, in the light of day were holding a prayer book when he came to hear my confession.”

Mrs Collins said “there must be acknowledgment and accountability for the harm and destruction that has been done to the life of victims”, calling for a strengthening of Church policies to avoid what she called the “deliberate cover-up and mishandling of cases”.

She was speaking during a four-day symposium attended by representatives of 110 bishops’ conferences and 30 religious orders, which included a penitential vigil to show contrition for the sexual abuse of children by priests and for the actions of Catholic officials who shielded the perpetrators from justice.

Cardinal Marc Ouellet, prefect of the Vatican’s Congregation for Bishops, presided over the vigil on Tuesday.

The conference, “Toward Healing and Renewal”, launched a global initiative aimed at improving efforts to stop clerical sexual abuse and better protect children and vulnerable adults.

The symposium was held at Rome’s Pontifical Gregorian University and was supported by the Vatican Secretariat of State and several other Vatican offices.

During the penitential vigil, held in Rome’s St Ignatius church, a “very profound, clear and explicit” text was read, in the words of Jesuit Fr Hans Zollner, a licenced psychologist and psychotherapist and one of the symposium organisers.

Seven individuals from the Church who represent groups who have been “guilty or negligent” asked for forgiveness both from God and victims.

Mrs Collins said one of the reasons that abuse victims are still so hurt and angered is that, “despite apologies for the actions of the abusers, there have been few apologies for the protection given them by their superiors”.

She said: “There seems to be a lack of penalty for any of these men in leadership who deliberately or negligently covered up for abusers, allowing them to continue to abuse unhindered.”

She added that “we have had apologies, but forgiveness is a part of Christianity, a part of the Catholic Church” that is so important.

Cardinal William Levada, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which deals with priests accused of abuse, gave the symposium’s opening address, and Pope Benedict XVI delivered a message to be read to symposium participants. Among the other speakers were mental health professionals who have worked in the areas of prevention and treatment, and bishops from around the world, who talked about responses to the abuse crisis in their countries.

The conference was designed in part to help bishops’ conferences and superiors of religious orders respond to a 2011 circular letter from the doctrinal congregation requiring all dioceses in the world to develop guidelines on handling allegations of abuse.

After the conference, the Gregorian University and other institutions will launch an e-learning centre – the Centre for the Protection of Children – which will offer online resources in five languages.

The centre will be based in Munich and is designed to help Church leaders respond pastorally to the issue of sexual abuse in the Church and society as a whole. The centre has been funded for an initial three-year period and received significant funding directly from Pope Benedict through the Papal Foundation.

Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, said that under the “nasty” regime Christian refugees from Iraq had found “an oasis of relative calm”. But following the Arab Spring uprising, he said, suspected rebels had killed a young Christian man.

In an article in this week’s Catholic Herald, he writes: “A great many have taken refuge in neighbouring Syria in which, despite the heavy-handed nature of its dictatorial regime, Christians (and indeed Jews) have found an oasis of relative calm until hit by the recent stirrings of the Arab Spring.

“Last month, the 29-year-old Greek Orthodox Hieromonk Basilios Nassar was shot dead while giving medical aid to a man who himself had been wounded by a bullet from suspected rebels in Hama, Syria. Should the Assad regime, nasty as it is, fall we should then expect hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of such killings to take place – as indeed they have taken place in Iraq.

“Christians are currently engaged in almost every aspect of public life in Syria. Can we realistically expect this to continue under an Islamist government with democratic legitimacy? As we are now witnessing beatings, abductions, and xenophobic killings in free Libya, the West must be forced to acknowledge the pernicious edge of our liberal internationalist foreign policy.

“While revelling in Schillerian bliss over exuberant moments of popular liberation like those in Tahrir Square last year, we must remind ourselves that dangers lurk deep within the enshrinement of the rule of the majority without sufficient safeguards reinforcing the rights of minorities.”

In a statement released by the Vatican yesterday, Cardinal-designate Giuseppe Bertello and Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, the current and immediate past presidents of the Governorate of Vatican City State, described as a “cause of great sadness” the recent “unlawful publication” by Italian journalists of two letters addressed to Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican secretary of state.

The letters, written by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò when he was the governorate’s secretary general, or second-highest official, contained assertions based on “erroneous evaluations” or “fears unsupported by proof,” the statement said.

Archbishop Viganò’s letter to the Pope, dated March 27 2011, lamented “so many situations of corruption and abuse of power long rooted in the various departments” of the governorate and suggested that the archbishop’s departure from his position there “would provoke profound confusion and dejection” among all those supporting his efforts at reform.

Pope Benedict named the archbishop as nuncio to the United States in October 2011.

The governorate manages the 108 acres of Vatican City State, including the Vatican Gardens and Museums.

During Archbishop Viganò’s stint at the governorate a budget deficit of nearly £6.2 million (€7.5 million, $9.8 million) in 2009 turned into a surplus of £18 million ($28 million, €21 million) in 2010.

According to the Vatican statement, which was also signed by the current secretary general and a former vice-secretary general of the governorate, the improved finances during the period in question were “due principally to two factors”: the management of the governorate’s financial investments by a different Vatican office and, “in even greater measure, to the excellent results of the Vatican Museums”.

Archbishop Vigano’s letter to Cardinal Bertone, dated May 8 2011, complained of the cardinal’s plans to remove the archbishop from his post and accused the cardinal of breaking a promise to let the archbishop succeed the then-president of the governorate, Cardinal Lajolo, upon the latter’s retirement.

In the letter, the archbishop blamed Cardinal Bertone’s change of mind on the effects of “strategies put into action in order to destroy me in the eyes of Your Eminence”, including the planting of libelous stories in the Italian press by several of Archbishop Vigano’s enemies among fellow Vatican officials.

The archbishop singled out one such official – Mgr Paolo Nicolini, managing director of the Vatican Museums – for especially severe and colourful criticism, including charges of mismanagement.

The Vatican statement did not acknowledge several other recently published letters apparently written by Archbishop Viganò. But it seemed to contest certain charges made in one of those letters, dated April 4 2011, and addressed to Pope Benedict.

That letter alleged “corruption” in the granting of contracts to outside vendors. “Jobs were always given to the same companies,” it said, “at a cost that was double that of similar work carried out outside the Vatican.”

The letter claimed that the archbishop had been able in one year to cut the cost of the Christmas Nativity scene in St Peter’s Square by £207,000 (€250,000, $328,000).

The same letter criticised the “inexperience” of investment advisers whose recommendations purportedly led the Vatican to lose £2.1 million (€2.5 million, $3.3 million) in a single transaction.

By contrast, the Vatican statement emphasised the regularity of the governorate’s procedure for assigning major contracts, with oversight provided by a special committee appointed by the president.

The statement also expressed “full faith” in the “illustrious members” of the governorate’s financial and management committee, its departments heads and other officials, in spite of “suspicions and accusations” which have been “revealed – upon careful examination – as unfounded.”

Fr Gabriele Amorth said that when the Pope blessed the men they “flew three metres backwards” and “howled no longer”.

In extracts from a new book, published yesterday by Panorama magazine in Italy, Fr Amorth explained that incident occurred when the men, known only as Giovanni and Marco, attended a general audience.

When the Pope appeared, Fr Amorth said, according to AFP: “The two possessed men fell to the floor and banged their heads on the ground. The Swiss guards watched but did nothing; perhaps they have seen how the possessed react when faced by the Pope before?

“The Pope began to wave to the crowd and Giovanni and Marco started to howl, drool, shake and fly into a rage.

“The possessed were then hit by a wild jolt, their whole bodies were hit. They flew three metres backwards … and howled no longer.”

Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi denied that the Pope had performed an exorcism.

“Even if the facts are true, it’s not correct to talk about an exorcism by the Pope, who was not warned or aware of their presence,” he said.

Fr Amorth made a similar claim about Blessed Pope John Paul II. In 2000, he said that the late pope performed an impromptu exorcism on a a teenage girl at the end of an audience in St Peter’s Square. The Vatican’s press office declined to comment on the claim at the time.

In a written response to the Welsh government’s White Paper on Organ and Tissue Donation, leaders of the Catholic Church in Wales said: “Our main concern is that the positive ethos of donation as a free gift is being endangered by an ill-judged if well-intentioned proposal to move from voluntary donation to presumed consent.”

They urged the Welsh government “to revisit the process and establish a cross-party committee that could consider all the evidence submitted to the previous enquiries of the last three years”.

Archbishop George Stack of Cardiff has previously expressed serious reservations about the ethics underpinning a system in which the deceased’s organs are automatically donated unless they choose to opt out in advance.

The Church’s written submission is co-authored with the Church in Wales and the Wales Orthodox Mission.

The submission states: “If organs may be taken without consent, this is no longer ‘donation’. This is not just a health matter but concerns serious human rights issues such as personal autonomy, as well as questions about the relationship of the state and the citizen.

“At the same time the belief that presumed consent would itself increase the number of organs available for transplantation is not supported by the available evidence.”

The Sisters, who have run a nursing home at the hall for 50 years, have applied to Sefton Metropolitan Borough Council for Listed Building Consent to remove the embedded marbles from their Lancashire home, which are deteriorating due to climatic conditions.

The application before its planning committee is to remove, conserve and replicate these artefacts with the aim of selling them to a public buyer.

Any funds raised will be used to renovate two listed buildings in the grounds – the Old Hall and the Stable Block – which are near the top of the Heritage At Risk Register, and are used to provide nursing care.

Initially English Heritage gave its support to the application, but then imposed conditions, to which the Sisters have agreed. However, English Heritage has now refused the application.

The Sisters bought Ince Blundell Hall in 1959, and converted the house into a nursing home.  The hall had been the ancestral home of the Blundell family, and still housed a collection of 600 Roman and Greek marbles acquired by Henry Blundell during the 18th century.

In 1959, the Weld-Blundell family and the Sisters arranged for Liverpool Museum to take the marbles, and the museum removed 500 pieces between 1959 and 1961. About 70 bass reliefs embedded in the walls of the buildings were left behind with a few minor pieces in the grounds, most of which have since been stolen.

A spokesman for the order said: “The Sisters are fully aware of the significance of the remaining heritage items and have done their best to preserve and protect them. They are distressed to witness the progressive deterioration of the artefacts from a combination of vandalism, theft, pollution and extremes of climate.

“The reliefs are now in danger of deteriorating to the point that it will no longer be possible to conserve them. Those on the outside of the Pantheon are crumbling and their condition is so poor that they ‘sugar’ on touch.”

In July 2011, English Heritage commented that the Sisters had been “excellent custodians” of the Hall: “It is evident that the Sisters have successfully utilised the building as a nursing home whilst still retaining its character and heritage. Ince Blundell is still a fine historic house and the Sisters have proved themselves to be excellent custodians. English Heritage is reassured by that.”

The Sisters say they intend to continue with the application.

The objects being put up for sale include church plate, chalices – including a Charles I chalice made in 1633 and an Arts and Crafts chalice worth £13,000 to £15,000 – as well as reliquaries and a 19th-century monstrance.

The treasures are being sold by Dominic Winter auctioneers after the remaining Benedictine monks at the abbey decided to move to a smaller friary in Chilworth, near Farnham in Surrey.

Priestly bloggers Fr Mildew and Fr Ray Blake have criticised the sale, saying more effort should have been made to keep the holy objects for use in liturgy.

Fr Blake, parish priest at St Mary Magdalene, Brighton, said that St Michael’s Abbey at Farnborough, Hampshire – another Benedictine monastery – were considering trying to acquire “as many of these items as possible”.

A spokesman for the abbey declined to comment.

Fr Blake wrote: “I only hope and pray that these sacred objects are bought and restored to the holy use for which they were intended. However, their fate is more likely to become part of some decorative scheme or possibly even to be used for a sacrilegious purpose.”

A spokesman for Dominic Winter said that all of the religious objects had been deconsecrated. The auction will be held on Wednesday and Thursday next week.

St Augustine’s Abbey in Ramsgate, designed by A W Pugin, was the first monastery to be built in England since the Reformation. It was founded in 1856. The 11 Benedictines voted to leave in 2009 and bought the Franciscan friary in Chilworth in 2010.

The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales is distributing one million cards to 24 dioceses including the Bishopric of the Forces and the ordinariate in order to cultivate evangelisation among Catholics.

The credit-card-size resource features on one side a clear statement that the carrier is a Catholic and a list of six things that Catholics are called to do.

There is also a sentence that reads: “In the event of an emergency, please contact a Catholic priest.”

The other side of the card has a quote from Blessed John Henry Newman, focusing on the call to serve and affirming that everyone has a mission.

Bishop Kieran Conry of Arundel and Brighton, chairman of the bishops’ Department for Evangelisation and Catechesis, said: “We all carry a variety of cards in our purses and wallets which reflect something of our identity and the things that are important to us. The faith card for Catholics aims to offer a daily reminder of what it means to be a follower of Jesus Christ. We can’t summarise the whole of our faith in bullet points, but we hope that the card simply inspires people to do, read and learn more.”

The bishop added: “The card is also designed to give Catholics confidence to share their faith – often people need help knowing what to say. Faith is a not a private matter. This is something that Pope Benedict reminded the Catholic community in his recent letter announcing a Year of Faith, beginning in October 2012. Carrying a faith card takes courage, it signals to others, every time you use your wallet or purse, that you believe in God, that your life has a purpose, that you are trying to love and serve your neighbour. We hope that Catholics will use it to witness to their faith. If someone asks a question about Catholicism, a starting point could be to show the card and to take it from there.”

The resource is free and will be distributed to diocesan offices during February and March 2012 for local circulation.

Archbishop Smith, chairman of the bishops’ Department for Christian Responsibility and Citizenship, said that he and Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Wesminster also planned to write a pastoral letter about the importance of marriage to a stable society.

He said that after the details of the legislation had emerged “we will be producing a leaflet for Catholics to raise awareness of the specific proposals and to encourage people to engage with their MPs”.

His statement follows a meeting with Theresa May last week in which the Home Secretary clarified that the Government intended to introduce same-sex marriage and that the consultation next month was only to help with the details of the legislation.

Archbishop Smith said: “At our recent bishops’ conference standing committee meeting we discussed the forthcoming government consultation on same-sex marriage. It was agreed that the president and vice-president of the conference will write a pastoral letter reflecting on the importance of marriage and family life in building a stable and healthy society, and affirming and celebrating the Church’s understanding of marriage.

“In addition, after we have had the opportunity to study the details of the government consultation, we will be producing a leaflet for Catholics to raise awareness of the specific proposals and to encourage people to engage with their MPs,” the archbishop said.