VATICAN CITY, Italy (AFP) -- The Vatican yesterday stepped up efforts to show its resolve in fighting priestly paedophilia as victims in Malta demanded a meeting with Pope Benedict XVI during a weekend visit.

The 11 Maltese citizens who claim to have been sexually abused as children by Catholic priests demanded that the pope apologise to them personally when he visits the island on Saturday and Sunday.

If the pope agrees, it will be his first meeting with victims of predator priests since 2008, when he met such groups in the United States and Australia.

"We are asking to meet the pope so he can apologise to us in person," Lawrence Grech told a news conference on behalf of the 11. "We want to meet the pope for a few minutes to help us heal and to overcome this trauma."

The demand came as the Vatican posted guidelines on handling paedophilia cases for the first time on its website and the head of the Holy See's mouthpiece, L'Osservatore Romano, praised the Church for handling the scourge in an "exemplary" manner.

The Church "is the only institution to address this problem that concerns all of society in an exemplary manner," editor-in-chief Giovanni Maria Vian told the foreign press in Rome.

Meanwhile in the Chilean capital Santiago, visiting Vatican number two Tarcisio Bertone said the pope was likely to take additional "surprising" initiatives against priestly paedophilia.

The Vatican secretary of state also noted that other faiths suffered from the scourge of paedophilia.

"We have statistics from the United Nations and UNICEF (the UN Children's Fund) referring to thousands of cases... and that do not speak only of the Catholic Church because it is a small percentage," he said.

Bertone noted at a news conference that Benedict had met with "many victims... and is prepared to meet others."

Large-scale paedophilia scandals have rocked the Catholic Church in Ireland, Austria, the United States and the pope's native Germany in recent months.

Benedict has himself faced allegations that he failed to take action against predator priests, both as head of the Vatican's top doctrinal and morals enforcer and earlier as the Munich archbishop.

On Friday he faced fresh charges that he dragged his feet over defrocking a predator priest in California.

The Vatican has been faulted for a perceived strategy of blaming the media for playing up the paedophile revelations, accusing them of trying to smear the pope.

Top prelates closed ranks around Benedict ahead of Easter mass on April 4, with the dean of the Vatican's College of Cardinals, Angelo Sodano, saying that "the people of God are with you" and would ignore "idle chatter".

Experts have said that the Vatican's approach was a sign of weakness, and that the Church should take full responsibility for the scandals.