Scotland ? Pope Benedict XVI waded into the hostile atmosphere Thursday of highly secular Britain, admitting the Catholic Church did not act decisively or quickly enough to remove priests who molested children in his strongest comments yet on the worldwide sex abuse crisis shaking his church.

In a visit unprecedented for the bitter opposition to his papacy, Benedict warned against “aggressive forms” of secularism. The German pope recalled how Britain had stood against “Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society.”

Benedict’s historic four-day state visit has been overshadowed by disgust over the abuse scandal and indifference in Britain, where Catholics are a minority of 10 percent and endured centuries of bloody persecution and discrimination until the early 19th century.

The trip is the first state visit by a pope to the U.K., and his meeting with Queen Elizabeth II was symbolically significant because of the historic divide between the officially Protestant nation and the Catholic Church.