SYDNEY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict met four Australian victims of sexual abuse by the clergy on Monday at a private mass, an unscheduled meeting that underlined his weekend public apology to all those who had been abused by the church.

Sexual abuse by Catholic clergy has shadowed the pope's visit to Sydney, with emotional pleas by victims and their families for the church to deal openly with the problem and for the Pope to lead the way by meeting them.

"He listened to their stories and offered them consolation," the Vatican said in a statement, adding the Pope had met two women and two men in a private audience in a chapel at Sydney's St Mary's Cathedral, hours before he was due to leave Australia.

"With this fatherly gesture the Holy Father wanted to once again show his concern for all those who had suffered sexual abuse," the statement added.

The pontiff made his apology on Saturday, on the eve of his World Youth Day open-air mass at a Sydney racecourse which drew about 400,000 young people from around the world on Sunday.

There have been 107 convictions for sexual abuse in the Catholic church in Australia but victims groups say there may be thousands of cases.

The pope had also confronted sexual abuse in the church in the United States during a visit to Washington in April, meeting victims and vowing to keep paedophiles out of the priesthood.

But the pope's words in Australia were stronger than those he used in the United States, where the biggest of the scandals broke in 2002 and where Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law resigned in disgrace that year.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella and Michael Perry, Editing by Jonathan Standing and Mark Bendeich)

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