Benedict said the Catholic Church must reflect on what is wrong with its message — and with Christian life in general — that it allowed for the widespread sexual abuse of children by priests.
The church must train priests better to ensure that such abuses never occur again, he said.
It must also figure out how to help victims of sexual abuse heal, he said.
"We must ask ourselves what we can do to repair as much as possible the injustices that occurred," Benedict said. "We must ask ourselves what was wrong in our message, in our entire way of configuring the Christian being, that allowed such a thing to occur.
"We must find a new determination in faith and goodness."
The Christmas speech is an eagerly anticipated address that he uses to press key issues he wants the church hierarchy to reflect on.
Broader social context blamed
Benedict has previously acknowledged that the scandal was the result of sin within the church and that the church as a result must repent for it and make amends with victims.
But Monday's comments suggested that there might be some intrinsic problem with the way Christianity and its message is understood in the modern world that allowed for the abuse to fester unchecked.
The sex abuse scandal erupted on a global scale this year with revelations of thousands of victims in Europe and beyond, of bishops who covered up for pedophile priests and of Vatican officials who turned a blind eye to the crimes.
Questions were raised about how Benedict himself handled cases both as archbishop in Munich and as head of the Vatican office that handled abuse cases.
Recently, the Vatican released documentation showing that as early as 1988 then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger sought to find quicker ways to permanently remove priests who raped and molested children in a bid to get around church law that made it exceedingly difficult to defrock priests against their will.
While Ratzinger was unsuccessful then, Vatican rules now allow for fast-track defrocking for abusers.
Victims advocates say the Vatican still has a long way to go in terms of requiring bishops to report sex crimes to police and release information and documentation about known pedophiles.
"We know of the particular gravity of this sin committed by priests and our corresponding responsibility," Benedict told the prelates gathered in the frescoed Sala Regia of the Vatican's apostolic palace.
But he said the crimes of the priests also had to be looked at in the broader social context, in which child pornography and sexual tourism is rampant and to some degree considered normal, and where as recently as the 1970s pedophilia wasn't considered the absolute evil that it is today.
"The psychological devastation of children, in which human beings are reduced to a marketplace article, is a terrifying sign of the times," Benedict said.
He called for a renewed sense of morality, stressing absolute good and evil, to guide the faithful.
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