A South African cardinal apologised to sex abuse victims today for describing paedophilia as an illness and not a crime in an interview. ‘I apologise to victims of child abuse offended by my misstatement of what was and still is my concern about all abused, including abused abuser,’ Cardinal Wilfrid Fox Napier, the Archbishop of Durban, said on Twitter after his interview Saturday to the BBC. ‘I believe that every dictionary consulted confirms paedophilia is a medical condition. What is a crime is the sexual abuse of children,’ he said. ‘Therefore paedophilia must be treated. What must be punished is the crime of sexual abuse of children,’ he said. ‘It’s the supreme irony. Because I raised the issue of the abused abuser, I stand accused of insensitivity to the sufferings of the abused,’ Napier said. His comments come as Pope Francis, the first pope to hail from Latin America, takes the helm of a Catholic Church rocked by thousands of cases of child abuse by paedophile priests.