Pope Benedict XVI's older brother, Georg Ratzinger, said in a newspaper interview that he regrets slapping students when he was the director of the Regensburg Cathedral choir in Bavaria.
Ratzinger, 86, who was choir director of the Regensburger Domspatzen from 1964 to 1994, said he was sorry he used corporal punishment before it was outlawed in 1980, though he said allegations of sexual abuse that have emerged in the diocese were never raised while he was in office. He spoke in an interview with the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper published yesterday.
"At the beginning I repeatedly dealt out a box on the ears but actually always had a bad conscience about it," Ratzinger said in the interview. "Earlier these smacks were simply the way to react to shortcomings or the conscious refusal to perform. I think it's a good development that the abandonment of such slaps has gained sustained recognition."
Ratzinger said he was surprised about recent allegations of sexual abuse in the cathedral choir, since they date back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, before his term as director. He told the newspaper that he had focused on other issues in the singing group and hadn't been aware of rumors about molestation.
"No, the problem of sexual misconduct that has recently emerged never came up," Ratzinger said.
The Diocese of Regensburg, where Pope Benedict once taught as a professor of theology, this week cited two cases of sexual abuse in the cathedral choir from the late 1950s, part of a wave of abuse allegations that has emerged this year in Germany.
The Vatican yesterday accepted a proposal by the German government to discuss sexual abuse of minors after more than 100 victims accused priests in the country of rape and molestation in cases mainly from the 1970s and 1980s.
-- Bloomberg News
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