VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI broke his recent silence on the clerical abuse scandal Thursday, complaining that the church was under attack but saying that "we Christians" must repent for sins and recognize mistakes.

The main U.S. victims group immediately dismissed his comments, saying they are meaningless unless Benedict takes concrete steps to safeguard children from pedophile priests.

Benedict made the remarks during an off-the-cuff homily at a Mass inside the Vatican for members of the Pontifical Biblical Commission.

"I must say, we Christians, even in recent times, have often avoided the word 'repent', which seemed too tough. But now under attack from the world, which has been telling us about our sins ... we realize that it's necessary to repent, in other words, recognize what is wrong in our lives," Benedict said.

"Open ourselves to forgiveness ... and let ourselves be transformed. The pain of repentance, which is a purification and transformation, is a grace because it is renewal and the work of divine mercy," he said.

Victims of clerical abuse have long demanded that Benedict take more personal responsibility for clerical abuse, charging that the Vatican orchestrated a culture of cover-up and secrecy that allowed priests to rape and molest children unchecked for decades.

Those demands have intensified in recent weeks as the Vatican and Benedict himself have been accused of negligence in handling some cases in Europe and the United States.

"Factual disclosures are not 'attacks' and 'penance' protects no one," said Mark Serrano, a spokesman for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, the U.S. group.

"When the Pope can't bring himself to utter the words 'pedophile priest' or 'child sex crimes' or 'cover-ups' or 'complicit bishops,' it's hard to have faith that he is able to honestly and effectively deal with this growing crisis," Serrano said in a statement.

Benedict's comments were his fullest allusion yet to the scandal since he sent a letter to the Irish faithful March 20 concerning what Irish-government inquiries have concluded was decades of abuse and church-mandated cover-up in the country.

In his letter, Benedict chastised Irish bishops for failures in leadership and judgment. But he took no responsibility himself or for the Vatican, which many victims have blamed for being more concerned about protecting the church than children.

Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi confirmed that Benedict was referring to the scandal with his comments Thursday. Summaries of the pontiff's remarks were reported on the front page of the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano and on Vatican Radio.

On Monday, the Vatican posted on its Web site what it claimed had been a long-standing church policy telling bishops that they should report abuse crimes to police, where civil laws require it.

But critics have said the guidelines were merely a deceptive attempt by Rome to rewrite history, designed to shield the Vatican from blame by shifting responsibility of dealing with abusive priests onto bishops.

The Rev. Thomas P. Doyle, a canon lawyer who has been the main expert witness for victims in hundreds of lawsuits, called the guidelines a "failed attempt at damage control through revision of history."

He noted that senior Vatican officials, including the current Vatican No. 2, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, were quoted in 2002 as saying the church shouldn't require bishops to report abusive priests to police because it would violate the trust the two shared.

"In practice, the policy has been to avoid contact with civil authorities and to cover up the crimes and the criminals," Doyle wrote in an article this week. "The newly created canonical tradition of referral to civil authorities is the result of one thing: public outrage, the exposure from the media and the pressure for accountability in civil courts."

ATLANTA – Americans suffered a bit less food poisoning last year.

There were significant drops in illnesses from shigella and the most dangerous form of E. coli, according to a government report released Thursday. But overall, food poisoning rates have been flat for more than five years.

The report is based on cases in 10 states that participate in a federally funded monitoring system of lab-confirmed infections that can be spread through food. They reported about 17,500 cases of the nine leading illnesses last year, down from about 18,500 in 2009.

More important to scientists are the rates of illness. The report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted a 12 percent decrease in the incidence rate for E. coli O157:H7 from 2008. The rate dropped to its lowest level since 2004.

That E. coli strain is a dangerous form of an ordinarily harmless family of bacteria that can cause abdominal cramps, fever, bloody diarrhea, kidney failure, blindness, paralysis, even death. Cases occur in about 1 in every 100,000 people.

The decrease was probably due to better safety measures in the meat and produce industries, health officials said.

Shigella (shih-GEHL'-uh) is a bacterial infection that is about four times more common. It also declined significantly, about 40 percent. However, only about 20 percent of shigella cases are thought to be caused by food. It's usually spread by person-to-person contact, with day care centers a traditional hot spot for infections.

That decrease may have been driven by unusually high amounts of hand-washing and disinfection because of the swine flu pandemic that broke out last year, said Elliot Ryser, a professor of food science at Michigan State University, who was not involved in the study.

"You might kill two birds with one stone" by hand-washing, Ryser said, referring to swine flu and shigella.

For other illnesses, the CDC reported:

• Salmonella — the most common of the illnesses — was down slightly, despite a national outbreak of peanut-related salmonella at the beginning of 2009.

• Vibrio, a rare illness associated with shellfish, continued to rise.

• Listeria also rose, despite efforts by the packaged meats industry to prevent the illness.

Deaths from these bugs are unusual. In the 10 states last year, salmonella was the deadliest with 24 deaths attributed to it. Listeria was second with 20 deaths. Vibrio was blamed in seven deaths, the dangerous E. coli strain in two and one from shigella, according to CDC data.

The study is being published in a CDC publication, Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

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On the Net:

The CDC publication: http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr

WARSAW – Investigators blamed pilot error Thursday for a crash that killed Poland's president, as harrowing details emerged of how the crew knew they were doomed after hitting trees while trying to land in Russia.

As Poland's national unity fractured over plans to bury president Lech Kaczynski in a castle alongside kings and heroes, officials released the first results from analysis of the plane's black box flight recorders.

"The crew was aware of the inevitability of the coming catastrophe, if only due to the plane shaking after the wings hit the trees -- which we are certain happened," Poland's chief prosecutor Andrzej Seremet told commercial radio.

Colonel Zbigniew Rzepa, a Polish military prosecutor, said the pilots of the Russian-made jet were aware of the imminent crash as the last seconds of the voice recordings "were dramatic", but did not elaborate.

But Russian investigators found no evidence that "any of the high-ranking passengers forced the pilots to land in Smolensk", Russia's Interfax news agency quoted a source close to the investigation as saying.

The Polish presidential Tupolev Tu-154 crashed in thick fog Saturday near the western Russian city while taking a delegation to a memorial service for a World War II massacre.

All 96 people on board, many of them senior Polish military and political figures, were killed.

Officials said Thursday that a "special security procedure" was being implemented for the arrival of US President Barack Obama and other foreign leaders for the funeral in Krakow, with around 80 planes set to land there Sunday morning.

But protests have erupted over the choice of Krakow's historic Wawel castle, the resting place of Poland's past kings, a saint and national heroes, for the burial of the president and his wife Maria.

Hundreds of people rallied in Warsaw, Krakow, the Baltic port of Gdansk and Poznan in the west on Wednesday, while more than 42,000 people have joined a Facebook campaign against the decision.

Questions have also mounted over the cause of the crash.

Russian investigators said Thursday that initial findings from the jet's data and flight voice recorders said the crew may not have been aware of the particularities of the plane when they repeatedly tried to land.

"An analysis of the evidence, including the first results from the decoding of the black boxes, shows that an error in piloting led to the disaster," the Interfax news agency quoted a source close to the investigation as saying.

The official said it appeared that the plane tried to land by levelling out its oblique descent approach to a horizontal angle in a bid to compensate for the bad weather.

But the source said a "particularity of the plane is that if its speed of descent is more that six metres per second, when the plane equalized and goes into a horizontal flight it loses altitude," the source said.

Speculation that the pilots were under pressure has centred on a spat in 2008, when Kaczynski tried and failed to order a pilot to land in Tbilisi while on a show of support for Georgia during its brief war with Russia.

A Russian aviation official, Tatyana Anodina, meanwhile denied previous reports the plane had made three or four landing attempts, saying it only tried once.

On Saturday, Kaczynski's delegation was headed to a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, when thousands of Polish officers were slaughtered by the Soviet secret police in 1940.

Thousands of people queued for a third day Thursday to pay their respects to the conservative, nationalist Kaczynski and his wife, whose bodies are lying in state at the presidential palace in Warsaw.

An early presidential election is expected on June 20.

The crash also robbed Poland of leading figures, including Ryszard Kaczorowski, 90, a leader in exile who kept the dream of freedom alive during communism. His body returned home Thursday.