I Knew of Abuse but Did Nothing Says Popes Brother, Sydney Morning Herald, March 11, 2010

I Knew of Abuse but Did Nothing, Says Pope's Brother

Sydney Morning Herald
March 11, 2010

http://www.smh.com.au/world/i-knew-of-abuse-but-did-nothing-says-popes-brother-20100310-pzdv.html

GERMANY -- ROME: The Pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, has admitted slapping boys and failing to report physical abuse as scandal intensifies around sexual abuse in German boarding schools where he taught choir in the 1960s.

Monsignor Ratzinger, 86, said in an interview this week that the sexual accusations referred to a period before his tenure. But he apologised for slapping students before corporal punishment was outlawed in Bavaria in 1980.

Everyone remained silent...the Pope, right, with is brother, Georg Ratzinger, in Regensburg in 2006.

"In the beginning I, too, slapped people in the face, but I always had a bad conscience about it," Passauer Neue Presse quoted him as saying.

"The problem of sexual abuse was never raised. I believe it wasn't just the church that remained silent. It was also clearly the society."

He also admitted knowing about physical abuse at the schools, "but I did not have the feeling at the time that I should do something about it".

At least 115 people have come forward to say that they were abused at Jesuit-run schools in Germany. The German Ministry for the Family has announced a government discussion of the issue, in which the Vatican will participate.

A statement by the diocese in Regensburg, where Monsignor Ratzinger taught, said that one former student said he was "abused through excessive beatings and humiliations, and molested through touching in the genital area".

The German magazine Spiegel reported this week on accusations involving one of the schools, quoting a former student, Franz Wittenbrink, saying the Etterzhausen boarding school had an "elaborate system of sadistic punishments combined with sexual lust". It also said a priest had masturbated with pupils in his apartment.

"I find it inexplicable that the Pope's brother, Georg Ratzinger, who had been cathedral bandmaster since 1964, apparently knew nothing about it," Mr Wittenbrink said.

A wave of church sexual abuse scandals has emerged in recent weeks in Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, adding to the fallout from an investigation of abuse in Ireland. A similar independent inquiry into alleged sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests has been ordered by Dutch religious leaders, the BBC reported.

In a note read on Vatican Radio on Tuesday, the Vatican spokesman, Federico Lombardi, cautioned against limiting the concerns over child sexual abuse to Catholic institutions.

He noted that in Austria, 17 abuse cases were found in Catholic institutions, while in the same period 510 abuse cases were found "in other areas". "It would be as well to concern ourselves also with them," he said.

Father Lombardi also defended the church's "specific" internal procedures for handling abuse cases, noting that canon law did not impose fines or detention but prohibited the exercise of ministry and allowed for the loss of ecclesiastical rights.

The German Justice Minister, Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, said on Monday that the church put up a "wall of silence" in abuse cases.

The newly emerging scandals cut particularly close to Benedict, who was the archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1982. He then spent two decades in charge of the Vatican's doctrinal arm, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is ultimately responsible for investigating abuse cases.