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	Vatican Backs Sex Abuse Probe Pretoria News March 8, 2010 http://www.pretorianews.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=5381239 VATICAN CITY: The Vatican said on Saturday it supported a German diocese's efforts to shed light on sexual abuse allegations connected to a renowned boy's choir once led by Pope Benedict XVI's brother. The Regensburg Diocese, oversees the school connected to the Regensburger Domspatzen choir, said on Friday a former singer had come forward with allegations of sexual abuse in the early 1960s, and that it was hiring a lawyer to help it carry out a "systematic" clarification of the abuse allegations. The Vatican said it supported the diocese in its "willingness to analyse the painful question in a decisive and open way". "The main reason for the church's clarification is to render justice to possible victims," the Vatican said in a statement published in its newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano. Monsignor Gerhard Ludwig Mueller, the bishop of the Regensburg Diocese, said in L'Osservatore that the cases that have emerged so far "do not coincide with the term of Professor Georg Ratzinger". the pope's brother, who led the choir from 1964 to 1994. Ratzinger told German public radio he did not know of any abuse cases in the choir. The German weekly news magazine Der Spiegel reported that therapists in the region are treating several alleged abuse victims in the choir. Franz Wittenbrink, who lived in the boarding school until 1967, was quoted as saying a "sophisticated system of sadistic punishments in connection with sexual lust" had been installed there. "Everyone knew it." He said the pope's brother must have known of these practices. - Sapa-AP
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