Regensburg, Germany, Jul 18, 2017 / 03:37 pm (CNA).- A new report claims that more students of a prestigious German choir were subjected to physical abuse than originally thought, and accuses the brother of Benedict XVI of turning a blind eye.
Ulrich Weber is the lawyer commissioned to investigate Regensburger Domspatzen, the official choir for the Regensburg Cathedral.
According to Weber, the July 18 report shows that the number children suspected to have been victimized is much greater than the 250 previously accounted for.
He said 500 members of the choir were exposed to physical harm and 67 suffered sexual abuse from 49 members of the school’s faculty, ranging from 1945 until the early 90s. Most of alleged perpetrators, he said, are not expected to face charges because of the length of time that has gone by.
The reported violence ranged from public ridicule, heavy beatings, and sexual abuse, but a large portion of the documented incidents involved slapping and food deprivation, a legal form of discipline in Bavaria until the 1980s.
Much of the heavier discipline was attributed to Johann Meier, a schoolmaster at one of the boarding schools from 1953 to 1992.
Weber has continued to blame Georg Ratzinger, brother of Pope Benedict XVI, for negligence on acting against the physical abuse, saying “one can accuse him of looking the other way and failing to intervene.” He has clarified however, that Fr. Ratzinger had no knowledge of sexual abuse.
Father Ratzinger, who was the director from 1964 to 1994, has also said that he was unaware of the degree of the physical abuse, according to a 2010 interview with Passauer Neue Presse.
“Had I known with what exaggerated fierceness he was acting, I would have said something,” he said in the interview of Meier, pointing out that he had only known about the discipline of slapping, a punishment common in many schools and homes in the area at the time.
However, many of the victims associated their time at the school with “fear, violence, and hopelessness,” Fr. Ratzinger said, apologizing for the corporal punishment of the time as well as the extreme abuse which occurred at the school.
“Of course, today one condemns such actions. I do as well. At the same time, I ask the victims for pardon.”
The Catholic Church has offered compensation to the victims of Regensburg, ranging from about $5,500 to $25,000.
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Archbishop Michel Aupetit of Paris. / Ibex73 via Wikimedia (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, speaking to journalists, Dec. 9, 2022 / Marcin Mazur
Kyiv, Ukraine, Dec 10, 2022 / 00:00 am (CNA).
Every effort for peace in Ukraine coming from Pope Francis and the Holy See is welcome, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister said Friday, whether it is helping to mediate for the exchange of prisoners or in assisting migrants and refugees.
However, the time for broad negotiations after the Russian aggression has not come yet, Dmytro Kuleba told a small delegation of journalists visiting Ukraine on Dec. 9 that his country has requirements for any such mediation to eventually take place.
The interview lasted about 40 minutes, and the questions dealt with Holy See-Ukraine relations, Holy See efforts for peace, and how Ukraine would welcome this effort.
Though appreciating Pope Francis’ constant mention of the Ukrainian situation and expressing an open invitation to the pope to visit the country, Kuleba also told CNA that some of the pope’s words have been “painful” for Ukrainians.
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, speaking to journalists, Dec. 9, 2022. Marcin Mazur
Pope Francis has often stressed that the Holy See is available to facilitate broad negotiations. Kuleba told journalists that “the protocolar response would be that a negotiation would be more than welcome,” but “the sad truth is that the time for this broad mediation hasn’t come yet and the reason for that is President [Vladimir] Putin.”
If you want peace, Kuleba said, “you do not send 100 missiles every week to destroy infrastructure. You do not send one wave of your soldiers after another into the Donbas. You don’t do all these things when you seek a peaceful solution.”
And so, he concluded, “the day for a big mediation will come, but we are not there yet, to our deepest regret.”
Kuleba told CNA that mediation should have some requirements, as any other commitment the Holy See would undertake. He said he also tackled this issue in the last meeting with the Vatican’s Secretary for Relations with States, Archbishop Paul Richard Gallagher.
Gallagher, whose role is equivalent to that of a foreign minister, spoke with his Ukrainian counterpart on Dec. 2 in Lodz, during the OSCE Ministerial Council.
I met with Secretary for Relations with States of the Holy See Mons. Paul R. Gallagher. I briefed Archbishop on Ukraine’s efforts to alleviate the global food crisis through our #GrainFromUkraine program and details of President @ZelenskyyUa’s Peace formula. pic.twitter.com/SNAc3iGbq4
Kuleba said he told Gallagher that the Vatican could choose which aspect to help with.
The Vatican might help with negotiating an exchange of prisoners, for instance, or the “return of thousands of kids kidnapped from Russia,” or also participating “in the implementation of the peace formula.”
However, Kuleba added that “picking an issue is the first step, while the second step is how you address the issue,” adding that “mistakes” needed to be avoided.
Among such “mistakes,” according to Kuleba, are the notion of a brotherhood between Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian people.
“We are not brothers and if you insist on the concept you are misled,” the Ukrainian minister told journalists since Russians “came to Kyiv to rape, to violate all the laws of God on the land of Ukraine.”
Kuleba also said hat one cannot be “neutral in public comments” and should “always remember that Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine is the victim of the aggression.”
Any attempt at making both sides somehow evenly responsible created “a completely wrong message,” the minister warned.
In his Oct. 2 Angelus, Pope Francis appealed to Russia’s President Vladmir Putin to stop the war, and to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to be seriously open to the pope’s proposal.
Kuleba explained why he was somewhat critical of such appeals by Pope Francis: While saying President Putin should stop the war made “perfect sense,” calling on President Zelenskyy to be open to serious peace proposals made it sound like Zelenskyy was “not open to peace.”
In other words, Kuleba added, the pope’s words wrongly “create the impression that both sides are guilty: one is guilty because of the attack, and the other is guilty because [it is] not open to peace proposals.”
Ukraine’s Foreign minister called on journalists to be pay attention when writing about a “serious peace proposal” being “based on the territorial integrity of Ukraine”, including Crimea.
“Every time you write or read or say that Ukraine insists on the restoration of Crimea, you send a message that Crimea is a special case. But for us and international law, there is no difference between [the towns of] Sebastopol and Kherson, Yalta and Donetsk.”
Speaking about the role religion can play in helping to reconstruct the country, the Ukrainian foreign minister said that the “Russian aggression caused big fractures” among religions. He also pointed to differences in viewpoints between Muslims in Russia and in Ukraine, and Russian and Ukrainian Jews.
Kuleba said that the “first and foremost expectation from confessions is to console people, to help them spiritually.” Most people turned to God “only in times of hardship,” he added.
“When everything is fine, you forget about God. Now, there is a higher demand for spiritual help, to be consoled by the Church.”
Kuleba also spoke to CNA about sanctions imposed on Dec.1 against some Orthodox clerics and moves to legislate against Russian influence through religious means.
Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba, speaking to journalists, Dec. 9, 2022. Marcin Mazur
The Ukrainian government will draw up a law banning churches affiliated with Russia under moves described by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy as necessary to prevent Moscow being able to “weaken Ukraine from within,” according to Reuters.
Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council told the government to draft the law following a series of raids on parishes that Kyiv said might be taking orders from Moscow.
Such moves, Kuleba told CNA, were motivated by “unacceptable” behavior by some clerics, such as the blessing of Russian soldiers for success on the battlefield.
Kuleba, however, praised the role of the churches, especially the presence of chaplains on the front.
Speaking about Pope Francis’ position on the Ukrainian issue, Kuleba said that he saw improvements.
“The truth,” he said, “is that this war shattered many foundations of the global political order.”
A big disappointment, he added, was what Pope Francis had said about NATO “barking” at the gates of Russia.
Kuleba stressed that he understood how and why the pope used the expression, but he noted that this argument was forged in Russia, so even mentioning served to legitimize it.
While it was “painful that the pope said something like that, I have to commend the pope for understanding”, Kuleba added, saying he was grateful to the pontiff for not sticking to “concepts that do not work and do not meet the reality check.”
Ukraine’s foreign minister said he was moved by the public prayer of Pope Francis for Ukraine on Dec. 8 in Rome. “[The] pope’s compassion means a lot to us and goes directly to the heart of Ukrainians,” Kuleba said.
He added that “obviously, we are waiting for his visit. He has many followers in Ukraine”, not only from the Roman Catholic and Greek Catholic communities: “The visit of the pope will be welcomed by a bigger part of Ukrainian society. So we are looking forward to welcoming him.”
This whole thing is kind of stupid. from 1945 to 1990, a span of 45 years, they discovered that over 500 children were disciplined the way they used to discipline children back in those days. Big deal. Apparently the “violence” and “abuse” also included “public ridicule”. The exact same thing was going on in every public school in Germany at the same time, so this is just obviously an attempt to pump up the numbers. The only interesting thing at all is that during those years, they also discovered that 67 children were sexually abused. None of them by Georg Ratzinger. I attended a public school where the gym teachers used to “paddle” kids who got out of line. These would have been considered abuse victims according to this report. The whole thing is kind of stupid and misleading, except for the sexual abuse numbers.
This whole thing is kind of stupid. from 1945 to 1990, a span of 45 years, they discovered that over 500 children were disciplined the way they used to discipline children back in those days. Big deal. Apparently the “violence” and “abuse” also included “public ridicule”. The exact same thing was going on in every public school in Germany at the same time, so this is just obviously an attempt to pump up the numbers. The only interesting thing at all is that during those years, they also discovered that 67 children were sexually abused. None of them by Georg Ratzinger. I attended a public school where the gym teachers used to “paddle” kids who got out of line. These would have been considered abuse victims according to this report. The whole thing is kind of stupid and misleading, except for the sexual abuse numbers.