Buffeted by a sexual abuse scandal that is quickly defining his papacy, Pope Benedict XVI marked the fifth anniversary of his election on Monday by telling a group of cardinals that he did not feel alone at the head of what he called a 'wounded and sinner' church. His remarks seemed yet another small and indirect reference to the growing sexual abuse scandal, which has focused more directly on whether Benedict, before he became pope, and his subordinates acted strongly enough against pedophile priests. Under increasing pressure to address the issue more forcefully, Benedict spoke a day after meeting with abuse victims during a short pilgrimage to Malta. At the anniversary lunch here on Monday, he told 46 cardinals that he 'very strongly feels that he is not alone; that he has on his side the entire college of cardinals, sharing with him tribulations and consolations, according to a front-page article that afternoon in L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper. He did not directly bring up the crisis, the paper said, but thanked the cardinals for their help at a time when the church seemed to press forward 'amid the persecutions of the world and the consolations of God.' When Benedict succeeded Pope John Paul II five years ago, many Vatican experts predicted that Benedict, a bookish scholar with a strong theological bent, would not inspire the same sort of public adoration as his predecessor. But few could have predicted that his papacy would be characterized by a series of controversies that have alienated Muslims, Jews, Anglicans and even many Roman Catholics. 'This has been a papacy of cyclical crises,' said Marco Politi, a journalist who covers the Vatican, citing a series of missteps: the citation of a disparaging comment about Islam in a 2006 lecture that angered Muslims; support for the canonization of the controversial pope during World War II, Pius XII; and the 2009 attempt to rehabilitate a Holocaust-denying bishop. 'The issue is that Benedict is a great thinker and theologian and preacher, but he doesn't have the temperament of a religious political leader,' Politi said. He added that the Vatican curia had been of little help to the pope. Benedict's greatest challenge, however, may be to deal with the sexual abuse scandal that has rocked the church in recent weeks, with cases mushrooming in the United States and Europe, including the pope's native Germany. Benedict returned Sunday from Malta, where he met and prayed with abuse victims, as he has several times in the past in addressing sexual scandals around the world generally. Speaking after Monday's lunch, Cardinal Angelo Sodano, dean of the college of cardinals, thanked the pope for leading the church 'with great generosity.' The college of cardinals 'is a large family, ever united with the successor to Peter,' in particular in the face of 'the challenges that the modern world poses to each disciple of Christ,' Sodano said in his speech, published in L'Osservatore Romano. 