http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article7065824.ece
But the first thing to notice: Check out the name of the article author.

You'd think that they'd come up with something more original than paedophilia

LOL I would have thought that was an April fools if it wasn't the Times and it wasn't a week early.
But yes, this isn't too surprising, unfortunately. Catholicism boils down to being the world's biggest paedophile fan club.

I take it you're an atheist?

Just like how atheism is the world's largest baby killing and religious persecuting club.
Oh, we aren't just basing incredibly offensive opinions off of sample bias and the news media? My mistake...

A bit of Stephen Fry seems appropriate here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_L-_cbi_nL0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBH3_78nitc
I thought the biggest persecutors of religious people were other religious people

Yep. But my point was that it's perfectly possible to be Christian and not be Catholic. The only reason the Church ever served a purpose is because people couldn't read and didn't have their own copy of the Bible. Well, guess what?
So the only real reason for being Catholic is so you can associate yourself with those wonderful corrupt paedophiles who are merely carrying on the traditions their predecessors have for centuries.

Oh, I wouldn't say that about the Church. I'm an agnostic myself and I find pedophilia of all sorts to be disgusting and evil, but to say that about the Church is a massive overstatement.

I'm not saying it's true of every priest by any stretch of the imagination. Among priests it's a very small minority that are responsible for these sexual assaults on kids.
However, the pope himself has covered up paedophilia and the Vatican has a history of doing so. If it was minor isolated incidents, then that would be in no way indicative of the Vatican's intentions. But not only the Vatican is covering the tracks of paedophiles within the Church, but so is the Pope. Seeing as the Vatican represents the head of the Catholic Church it's that upon which opinions of the organisation should be based.

So far it appears to be widespread in at Europe and the U.S.
We've got lots of cases here too.
It seems there are quite a number of high ranking church officials who seem to know about it.
Even the pope knew.
I'm wondering how widespread this is in the other Christian religions like the protestants, Angelican church, Greek orthodox, Russian orthodox, etc.
So far all the abuse reported was done by catholics.
Not the mention the way people with other religious beliefs are 'converted'.

So...did pedophiles join the church for an easy access to children, or priesthood (read: celibacy) make people become pedophiles?

The thing is that when the head of an organization is corrupt and/or allows corrupt behavior knowingly then it is a fair generalization to say that the whole organization is corrupt. Didn't US President Nixon renounce his power because of a scandal? Shouldn't we ask Pope Benedict to leave his charge because he was covering these acts? But no, we can't do that because he was chosen by God </sarcasm>
I was raised as a Catholic and I find disgusting that the Church would allow these things to happen and I loathe being asociated with these individuals if only for my religion. Don't get me wrong, I know that there are lots of good people in the Church but if we as part of the Church are tolerating these crimes then we are as guilty as the pedophiles. Being a priest shouldn't be a free pass to sexually abuse children because the Church has your back.

I doubt it's celibacy.
Not all priest are pedophiles, I've seen 2 on tv here recently which were quite obvious gay.
What's stopping a priest from starting a (secret) relationship with an adult?

I remember a case of a Catholic priest from Brazil IIRC that broke this celibacy vow and was dating a divorced lady. He was separated of the Church so he went and joined another religion that lets him have sex with women and be a priest. So I would say nothing is stopping them other than the fear of being vanished from their religion.
Also, according the the Catholic Church being gay is a sin so if it were discovered and they didn't have any intention to change their ways then they couldn't continue being priests either.
I respect the decision of taking a vow to become a priest and stand for everything that it represents but a lot of people that become priests aren't doing it for the right reasons.