VATICAN CITY
Vatican Insider
ANDREA TORNIELLI
VATICAN CITY
“I wasn’t aware of any sexual abuse”. This was stated by Georg Ratzinger, Pope Benedict XVI’ brother, when he was heard during the investigation into the abuses of the Regensburg Cathedral choirboys from the post-war period to the early 1990s. As the German state is no longer required to investigate time-barred crimes, it was the diocese, and therefore the Catholic Church itself, to promote and finance an independent investigation, which also encouraged victims to give information anonymously.
As it is known, the results presented in a solid 440-page report by lawyer Ulrich Weber, unveils the shocking number of 547 children victims of violence, 67 of whom were sexually abused. The names of some of the abusers, who are now dead, were already known. These facts, which cannot be underestimated or minimized, should however be put in context, namely that for decades corporal punishments were common throughout all schools in the country.
The stories of some of the victims are gruesome because they speak of both excessive punishments but also of ill-treatment at the limit of sadism and of repeated sexual abuse, which took place in the school as well as in the dormitory where the “Cathedral sparrows” lived. The choirboys told that the ones responsible of the blood-beatings were also responsible of the sexual harassment: for this reason, Weber’s lawyer suggested that the molesters would get sexually aroused by knocking out the kids.
What does Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, nowadays in his nineties, have to do with all of this? Benedict XVI’s brother directed the choir for thirty years, from 1964 to 1994. From the report emerges, though it is not so explicit for privacy issues, that the most serious episodes of sexual abuse took place in the 1950s, when he was not there. Monsignor Georg during his thirty-year career as a director has slapped some of the boys, and has publicly apologized for it seven years ago. He has never been, even remotely, accused of having in any way harassed the boys of the Cathedral. However, he was pulled into the scene because someone said he had told him about what was happening in school.
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