In a Christmas message to our readers, Kieran Conry, Bishop of Arundel and Brighton, talks of recent allegations of institutional child abuse in the Catholic Church.

Beset by allegations around the world and closer to home in Sussex, the year 2002 will go down as the Catholic Church's annus horribilis.

Last month, former Gatwick chaplain Father Michael Hill was jailed for five years for a string of sex offences.

He was appointed to the post by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor in 1985, despite advice that he posed a threat to children.

Here we publish Bishop Conry's message in full.

I remember a few years ago on Easter Sunday the BBC did an Everyman programme claiming the bones of Jesus (and Mary and Joseph as a bonus) had been found in a box in some cellar of a Jerusalem museum.

The story sounded fairly dramatic, suggesting that Jesus did not rise from the dead.

The drama lasted quite a few minutes, until someone pointed out that the three names scratched on the box were fairly common at the time. The story went back to the cellar with the box.

It's at the "religious" times of the year that you can do stories like that.

And so this Christmas we have the claim that the whole Christmas story is a concoction and the real truth of the matter is that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier.

This story is (literally) as old as Christianity - it was first put about by the opponents of the early Christians simply to discredit them.

On the one hand the television programme reflects the need for television to be somewhat sensational if possible and on the other hand it reflects the fact that people are probably more susceptible to religion at Easter and Christmas.

And although the festival of Easter in actually more important to the Christian churches, it is Christmas that grabs people's emotions more.

Christmas is a much more visual event than Easter.

It falls in the dead of winter and is associated much more with celebrations, shopping and parties, meaning there is much more light around the place (and some of the lighting displays on houses are quite spectacular, to put it kindly).

People need a bit of joy in the middle of the dullest and most miserable part of the year and Christmas was initially just a pagan festival to encourage people to have a bit of fun. The Church didn't get hold of it until 300 years after Jesus was born.

But it is also when more people go to church than on any other day.

They are probably more likely to visit their dead in the cemetery on that day, too.

So what is it about the celebration that turns people's hearts to religion?

The place of Mary, the mother of Jesus, is undoubtedly very important.

Our very first relationship as human beings is with our mother, in all but very few cases, and this bond is of fundamental importance for our growth, both physical and emotional.

Motherhood is a powerful sign - I can only speak as an observer.

It must be more intensely powerful for a mother.

And what makes Mary's all the more enchanting is that it is portrayed in terms that many people today would call magical but in Christian terms is called miraculous.

The birth of this child is announced by an angel, an image so well known that it is even used as a pub sign (The Salutation in Roehampton).

And then the birth itself is so full of drama. The baby is due but the couple can't find accommodation. Finally, someone takes pity on them and lets them in the back with the animals and the tradition of Jesus being born in poverty is born at the same time as him.

In reality, it would not be considered poverty.

A family that had animals and a place to house them would not be the poorest and it would not be uncommon for animals to share living space anyway.

It was St Francis of Assisi in the 13th Century who had the idea of building a model of the scene. The crib has been a traditional part of many people's Christmas ever since.

But it is the child that is at the heart of it.

This is probably what speaks to people most of all about Christmas.

It is an image of vulnerability and something to wonder at, because this child is said by the angels to be the son of God.

It is still a time for children, a time for showing affection and care. It is even said to be the "season of goodwill to all people" (but what does that say about the rest of the year?).

It is a tragic paradox for many Christians in our own part of the country, but especially for Catholics, that the crime of child abuse has come back into the news.

Some would say parts of the media are on a witch-hunt for the cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, Archbishop of Westminster, the former Bishop of Arundel and Brighton.

Others would say the sins and failures of our past have come back to haunt us.

Either way, it makes it less easy for some people to celebrate Christmas, especially the victims of this most inhuman of crimes.

It is all the more sad, too, that as we celebrate this most precious of all festivals, we should be preparing for war, and that in Jesus's own birthplace, the cycle of killings and reprisals repeats itself.

It may be we hold Christmas so special because most people do believe God came into our world.

We need to believe that or, in our darkness, it might all seem hopeless.

Kieran Conry, Bishop of Arundel & Brighton