Pope's German birthplace sprayed with graffiti

Pope Benedict XVI waves as he leads his weekly audience in the Paul VI hall at the Vatican December 9, 2009.

BERLIN (Reuters) - A vandal spray-painted an abusive message overnight on the house in southern Germany in which Pope Benedict was born, police said on Tuesday.

A police spokesman said the graffiti was a text sprayed in blue on the front door of the house in Marktl am Inn, in the predominantly Catholic state of Bavaria.

Police spokesman Konrad Rutzinger said the message seemed to be linked to the abuse scandals that have engulfed the Catholic Church, but declined to give details on its content.

It had been painted over since being noticed early in the day, local police said in a statement.

A survey published on Monday found that a quarter of Germany's Catholics were considering quitting the Church in the wake of reports of hundreds of cases, some many decades old, of sexual abuse by clerics.

Last week, clerics in Germany used Easter sermons to pray for the victims as public sentiment against the Church turned decidedly negative.

(Writing by Paul Carrel)