New York ? Saying that most reported cases of church sex abuse have involved priests and boys, Catholic officials in Rome have reaffirmed their stand against homosexuality, saying gays should not become priests.

The hard-line position has delighted some conservative Catholics in the United States. But it has angered gays.

“Trying to blame the sex abuse scandal on gay priests is irresponsible and malicious,” said Marianne Duddy, executive director in Boston for Dignity/USA, an organization of gay Catholics. “It maligns gay priests who are doing a wonderful job fulfilling their vocations as priests.”

Civil libertarians have also noted that some case studies show that the overwhelming majority of pedophilia cases are carried out by heterosexual men.

According to a report this week by the Vatican bureau of the Catholic News Service, a Vatican commission in January began studying the use of psychological exams to weed out gay candidates for the priesthood.

Attention to the issue has picked up in the wake of the U.S. sex abuse scandal.

Estimates on the percentage of gays among the 44,000 Catholic priests in the United States have varied, running as high as 50 percent, according to the Rev. Donald Cozzens, author of “The Changing Face of the Priesthood.”

“There’s no question that it’s a serious problem,” said Philip Lawler, editor of the Catholic World Report and a member of the arch-conservative Catholic organization called Opus Dei.

“The Vatican has been sending out signals for a couple of years that they wish the Americans would be more alert to this difficulty of homosexuality among priests,” Lawler said.