VATICAN CITY, (Reuters) – The Vatican yesterday  attacked The New York Times for its coverage of the sexual abuse  of children by priests, rejecting accusations that Pope Benedict  had mishandled a series of abuse cases before he was elected.

Signalling that it had decided to take the gloves off in its  reaction to coverage of sexual abuse, a Vatican statement  referred specifically to two reporters and a columnist.  (http://www.vatican.va/resources/resources_card-levada2010_en.html)

A 20-paragraph statement written by Cardinal William J.  Levada and published on the Vatican website said, “I ask the  Times to reconsider its attack mode about Pope Benedict XVI and  give the world a more balanced view of a leader it can and  should count on.”

Levada, an American, succeeded the pope as head of the  Vatican’s doctrinal body after the pontiff’s election in 2005.

A spokeswoman for The New York Times was not immediately  available to comment on the scathing Vatican attack.

The Vatican has denied any cover-up in the abuse of 200 deaf  boys in the United States by Reverend Lawrence Murphy from the  1950s to the 1960s.

The New York Times reported that the Vatican  and Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict, were warned  about Murphy but he was not defrocked.

Levada, the former Archbishop of San Francisco and a close  aide to the pope, attacked the newspaper’s main story on the  abuse scandal last week and an editorial as “deficient by any  reasonable standards of fairness” and defended the way the  Church and the Vatican had handled the Murphy case.

The statement offered a detailed criticism of the paper’s  coverage of the affair as well as an equally detailed defence of  pope, who Levada said had done much even before his election to  change the way the church views cases of sexual abuse.

Earlier yesterday conservative Catholic university  students from the Opus Dei group, rushed to the pope’s defence,  attacking journalists who have written about the sexual abuse of  children by priests as “sowers of mistrust”.

The some 4,000 students from around the world, in Rome for a  convention, handed the beleaguered pope a letter of support  during his weekly general audience in St Peter’s Square.

In his address, the pope made no direct reference to the  scandal sweeping the church but said priests should always send  a message of “hope, reconciliation and peace”.