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Pope Benedict’s elder brother Monsignor Georg Ratzinger has asked forgiveness for slapping pupils at the German boarding school where he was choirmaster and also apologized for failing to act over more violent punishment at the school.
He said he aware of violent incidents that took place at the school, but not the extent of the abuse, the Guardian reports.
Georg Ratzinger, 86, who was choirmaster at the Regensburger Domspatzen in Bavaria between 1964 to 1994, said he occasionally struck boys in his care, according to what he said had been the “normal reaction” at the time.
But he denied any knowledge of sexual abuse. “These things were never discussed,” Ratzinger told the Catholic daily, the Passauer Neue Presse. “The problem of sexual abuse that has now come to light was never spoken of.”
Ratzinger said he himself had occasionally given boys “clips round the ear”, as part of the “discipline and rigour” needed to reach a “high musical and artistic level”, but had “never beaten” pupils “black and blue”. He said he had been “relieved” when a ban on corporal punishment had put an end to the practice.
“I always had a bad conscience and I was happy when in 1980 corporal punishment was banned by lawmakers,” he said. He described the practice of striking pupils as “simply the normal reaction to failings or disobedience”.
Ratzinger said he had only learned later that the headmaster at the school between 1953 and 1992, who has been identified only as Johann M, had been “very violent”, but had not known the extent of the abuse. “Had I known at the time what excessive violence he was using I would have said something back then,” he said.
He said today he would view the matter differently, and for that, he said, he apologized to the victims.
Meanwhile, Holy See Press Office Director Fr Federico Lombardi SJ has issued a statement emphasizing Pope Benedict’s “concern” over the emerging abuse issue, particularly in European countries.
“These events mobilise the Church to find appropriate responses and should be placed in a more wide-ranging context that concerns the protection of children and young people from sexual abuse in society as a whole,” Fr Lombardi said.
“Certainly, the errors committed in ecclesiastical institutions and by Church figures are particularly reprehensible because of the Church’s educational and moral responsibility, but all objective and well-informed people know that the question is much broader, and concentrating accusations against the Church alone gives a false perspective.
“W, we must not fail to do everything possible in order to ensure that, in the end, they bring positive results, of better protection for infancy and youth in the Church and in society, and the purification of the Church herself,” Fr Lombardi said.
SOURCE
Pope’s brother asks for forgiveness over violence at school (The Guardian)
Note by Press Office Director on cases of sexual abuse (Vatican Information Service)
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