A vandal daubed a foot-high offensive slogan over the door to the German birthplace of Pope Benedict XVI in a protest at the paedophile priest scandal gripping the Catholic Church, police said yesterday.

"F... Yourselves" read the graffiti scrawled in blue letters on the façade of the house, according to photographs published in the German press.

"One can say it is connected" with the worldwide child sex abuse scandal, a police spokes-man said.

The 30-centimetre high letters of the slogan, first noticed at 6.45 a.m. (0445 GMT) yesterday, were hastily painted over. Police have appealed for witnesses.

The damage to the house, a three-storey, 264-year-old building on the market square in the picturesque village of Marktl am Inn on the Austrian border, was estimated at €1,500, police said.

The house, where the then Joseph Ratzinger was born in 1927, has become a pilgrimage site for Catholics from around the world.

Pope Benedict has been accused of turning a blind eye to sexual abuse cases before he became Pope and has not commented directly on the revelations in his home country, prompting anger in the Catholic community.