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Pope Benedict XVI visits the Western Wall, Judaism's holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem's Old City - Source: Reuters -
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The priest brother of Pope Benedict acknowledged that he had
meted out corporal punishment when he taught at a German school,
but said he had not known about a regime of more extreme violence
now being alleged.
Reports of abuses have surfaced at three Roman Catholic schools in
the conservative southern state of Bavaria including the Regensburg
cathedral school where Monsignor Georg Ratzinger, now 86, was
choirmaster from 1964 to 1994.
Corporal punishment was legal in Germany until 1980, but former
pupils of the school have said they suffered sexual abuse and
violent beatings and humiliation in the early 1960s by unnamed
teachers.
Ratzinger told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper that he, like the
headmaster, had slapped pupils to punish them.
But Ratzinger had not believed pupils who spoke of more violent
beatings.
"Pupils told me on concert trips about what went on. But it didn't
dawn on me from their stories that I should do something. I wasn't
aware of the extent of these brutal methods," he said.
"If I had known about the excess of force he (the headmaster) was
using, I would have said something ... I ask the victims for
forgiveness."
Renowned
The Regensburger Domspatzen, or Regensburg Cathedral Sparrows, are
one of Germany's most renowned boys' choirs.
Ratzinger said the physical punishment he dispensed had not been
abusive, and that his colleagues had never mentioned sexual
abuse.
But he said he was glad when corporal punishment was
banned.
The Regensburg diocese has said one of its priests abused two boys
sexually in 1958 and was sentenced to two years in jail.
Another clergyman served 11 months in jail in 1971 for
abuse.
Benedict, formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, taught theology at
Regensburg University from 1969 to 1977.
Reports last month said Catholic priests had sexually abused over
100 children at Jesuit-run schools around Germany.
Archbishop Robert Zollitsch, head of the German Bishops'
Conference, has issued a public apology and is due to travel to the
Vatican on Friday to discuss the scandal.
Last month, Pope Benedict summoned Irish bishops to the Vatican for
a scolding over a paedophilia scandal in which a government report
said Church leaders had covered up widespread abuse of children by
priests for 30 years.
And on Tuesday the Dutch Roman Catholic Church said it was asking
an independent commission to look into reports from more than 200
Catholics who have come forward to report alleged sexual abuses by
priests, often decades ago.
In Austria, the arch-abbott of St. Peter's Monastery in Salzburg,
Bruno Becker, 64, offered to resign after confessing to abusing a
boy 40 years ago, when he was a monk.
The victim, who is now 53, said Becker had abused him in a grotto
during a bicycle trip.
He also accuses two other Benedictine monks of having abused him sexually decades ago.
